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John Deere has turned itself into a poster-child for the DMCA
- Overtonwindow 10y agoI don't disagree with the authors overall premise, but I disagree that only corporations can own "property". The title is misleading as it refers to intellectual property. Anyone can own intellectual property, but I suppose only corporations have the money to defend it.
- maze-le 10y ago>> The title is misleading as it refers to intellectual property. Technically, you are right, but its not about the right to disassemble the drivers for your JD tractor, its really about the right to effectiveley own that machine. If you are not allowed to repair your own machine, you don't have ownership on it.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoI'd be infuriated if I bought that kind of machinery ($$$) and it was software killable. It's absurb people are defending this behaviour. The article mention's it's an end run around laws, so they can put whatever nonsense is allowed in a software license. If what I hear about the US south and their propensity for guns is true, they must be pissing off a lot of people I personally wouldn't mess with. Just waiting for a farmer to lose his rag when he can't fix a simple thing on a million dollar chunk of hardware.
- slim 10y agoIf you dont own intellectual property included in an object you bought, you don't own it. Ownership is unhindered use of the object.
- jonny_eh 10y agoIf I buy a book, I don't own the IP in the book. Even though I can do what I want with the physical item, I certainly cannot (legally) sell copies of it. (To be clear: John Deere and the rest are in the wrong, I'm just nitpicking your comment)
- pdkl95 10y agoYou own your copy of that book. You do not own the right to make copies of the book, but you can do own your copy and can do with it what you want. "IP" is disinformation - "copyright" is not "property", it's a temporary monopoly granted to the creator of a work.
- CaliforniaKarl 10y agoWorth noting, this article points back to an opinion piece on Wired from 2015: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/ https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/
- crb002 10y agoDo a GPL request on Deere ;)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- MarkMMullin 10y agoFirst I laughed, and then I thought this wasn't such a bad idea - sure you want to absorb the mind numbing true cost of the entire stack, then knock yourself out, be as 'Gollumy' as you like - get caught leveraging OSS for that and you pay the difference - a pipe dream, but a nice one - the real solution is more along - 'Dear John Deere, try not to be a complete dick all the time' but that rarely works
- pxnii 10y agoLet corporations think closed system can help their profit until someone come with an alternative open source system and customers flock over. More startup opportunities for smart tractors.
- Waterluvian 10y agoIf it works that way, shouldn't we be able to look at an industry and see that happening? I can't think of a good example, though I may not be thinking hard enough. There are definitely open source alternatives to many many things, but how often are they the ones capturing most of the market?
- xj9 10y agoremember linux? centralization is good for conquering, but decentralized forces hold more permanently once they take hold (which can take a long time).
- pxnii 10y agoIt needs not to be wholesale open sourced, but dev-friendly, hackable, after market support. Android is a good example. Even some OEMs favor lockdown (looking at you, Samsung), there are dev-friendly OEMs (OnePlus, Google). End users don't need to be tech-savvy, especially farmers, but knowing there is alternative support from community is good enough.
- izacus 10y agoUnless developers of the open system get their life destroyed by patent law suits. Stop believing in the free market fairy tale when there's so many ways available for the corporations to break and stop the basic requirement: competition.
- narrowrail 10y agoThe free market ideal, as I understand it, is something more like physicists saying, "in a perfect vacuum." It is an ideal to be considered, not a destination.
- ddingus 10y agoRipe for disruption. This disgusts me, frankly.
- Johnny555 10y agoThis is not an easy market to disrupt... the barrier to entry for manufacturing a $200,000 tractor or $500,000 combine is high, and the market is not that large. This isn't like coming up with a better lightbulb that cost $2 to manufacture and will sell millions. And while the large farms may cycle through their equipment in 5 years, a small farmer may keep his in operation for 20+ years, so there's not a whole lot of equipment turnover for an upstart to break into.
- narrowrail 10y agoJohn Deere is a brand name in the US. There are several Asian companies that compete with them. When was the last time you bought a tractor? Mahindra, Kubota, New Holland Ag, Case-Farmall and Massey-Ferguson. Have you looked at the competitive landscape?
- timthorn 10y agoMost of that list are American or European.
- vvanders 10y agoYup, and longer. Heavy equipment is built to a different standard, our Compact Utility Tractor is ~30 years old and still going strong.
- zaragossa 10y ago> This is not an easy market to disrupt... the barrier to entry for ... This is the way of thinking of the poor. The rich don't think like that.
- RevHaze 10y agoThe rich don't understand barriers to entry? Sure, throw enough money at the barrier and you can climb it, but that's not so much a revolutionary state of mind as it is just having enough money to try something expensive.
- Animats 10y agoThe article does not cite where Deere says that. Cisco has been doing this for years. They're worse than Deere; if you buy a used Cisco router, you don't have the right to run the software. You have to go through the "Cisco Hardware Inspection and Software Relicensing Program" to get a new license.[1] [1] http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/hw-sw-relicensing-program.html http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/hw-sw-relicensing-prog...
- rasz 10y agoMeanwhile in Europe you cant even claim that with software (eulas are toilet paper). Oracle tried to block resale of OEM software and had its ass handed to them in ECJ. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2505356/it-management/eu-court-rules-resale-of-used-software-licenses-is-legal----even-online.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2505356/it-management/e...
- EGreg 10y agoIf only European countries were more entrepreneur-friendly and had more limited liability...
- pinpeliponni 10y agoYou can't lump European countries up like that. There are vast differences. Most offer high levels of entrepreneurial financing, supporting government policies, separate tax systems for entrepreneurs, programs, entrepreneurial education, high ratio of R&D investments turned into profit, and so on. Actually, on most indicators most European countries lead US. The ones that are significantly lower are preferences towards entrepreneurship (most actually do not want that career option, and go for stable boring jobs), and the actual amounts of start-up companies. But still, the economic output of the EU per capita is higher than that of the US (has been for several years already), so who cares. Here's something to read on in case you are really interested: Global Enterpreunership Monitor 2016-2017 global report (http://www.gemconsortium.org/report http://www.gemconsortium.org/report)
- d_k_f 10y ago
- _jeb_ 10y ago> Deere's just reiterated that position to a US Copyright Office inquiry on the future of the law, joined by auto manufacturers (but not Tesla)... Bravo, Tesla.
- gambiting 10y agoTesla is not hugely better. If you have an accident, the car's computer shuts down and only an authorised Tesla garage can reactivate it. They have effectively DRMd the entire repair process.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoI wonder if that is more to keep a handle on the process though than anything sinister (in the early stages I would do that). Still quietly optimistic about Tesla's effect, so I hope they don't turn out as self-serving as the rest.
- DiabloD3 10y agoI, too, suspect it is done for legal liability issues, since there is a lot of money riding on just killing Tesla outright and plunging car manufacturing back into the dark ages. Tesla and Elon Musk has no interest in preventing people from driving their cars. They have an interest in making sure those cars are safe to drive, something Toyota, VW, GM, Ford, and Chrysler have historically had issues with (Hyundai/Kia, Nissan, and Honda really haven't had issues here, in the interest of fairness). Toyota licensing Tesla tech is a bit of an outlier, which I had assumed at the time was Toyota trying to improve vehicle reliability and safety, but the technology seems to have not gone further than that one series of RAV4s.
- Clownshoesms 10y agoToyota strike me as extremely pragmatic. I miss that Corona.
- kuschku 10y ago
- sandworm101 10y ago"Property" is a big term. This is about IP, not chattles or "real" property. The queen is human and certainly can own those types of property. You will need more than lawyers to tell her otherwise.
- Qwertious 10y ago"The queen is human and certainly can own those types of property." Actually, I believe you're technically wrong - the Queen is essentially the CEO of The Crown, which is a company and can therefore own those types of property.
- sandworm101 10y agoThere are other queens than that one.
- oh_sigh 10y agoHumans, as compared to corporations, have (probably) inbuilt timespans which govern their lifetime. If you 'own' a property after you die, how do you enforce your ownership?
- doodlebugging 10y agoYou'll be dead so technically you won't. But, a proper will drawn up by competent legal representatives will preserve your ownership for your descendents and see that your real assets, and a tractor is part of your real property that can be passed without any trouble on to your descendents. John Deere would have nothing to say about that. They would not likely want to have a lot of older machines showing up on their lots every time a farmer passes. Their focus is on keeping the buyer in the machine upgrade cycle. John Deere in this case is trying to do what auto-makers do with their cars in selling the car and then trying to lock the buyer into long term service and maintenance at a company dealership where their OEM parts are sold at a premium and installed by trained techs who also earn a premium for the dealership service department. There are a lot fewer tractors sold than cars and there is increasing competition from foreign rivals so Deere could be seeing part of their traditional market evaporate as smaller farm operations shift from their products to cheaper and easier to maintain foreign equipment. There is currently a thriving market for used farm equipment, especially equipment old enough to be pre-sensor, pre-electronics. A lot of this is bought up here and shipped overseas to small farms where people understand how to maintain them through prior exposure to the older tech. I read an article not long ago somewhere that described how older Massey Ferguson tractors are especially in high demand since they had a global distribution system before being bought by AGCO. There is a lot of technical and service information available for old equipment. Parts are available from salvage yards and NOS (new old stock) suppliers as well as high quality reproduction parts from other sources. John Deere risks driving their traditional customers away if they stick with the "you never own it" model. There are competitors who are advertising use of commonly available parts and sensors or tractors that don't use sensors at all making them simple for a reasonably skilled mechanic to maintain. Believe me that if you are a farmer maintaining a tractor is one of the normal parts of your life. You likely have all the tools, a large well-equipped shop, and plenty of able assistants if you need them. I digressed a bit there. Sorry.
- _Adam 10y agoThis isn't anything enterprise software companies haven't been doing for decades. John Deere just didn't set expectations. If there's enough demand for an open alternative, that's a business opportunity. Personally I think it's stupid. Release the code under GPL and you'll save yourself a PR nightmare and future proof the company. Manufacturing and design of farm equipment is what keeps competition out, not software.
- bonzini 10y ago> Manufacturing and design of farm equipment is what keeps competition out, not software. How can you be sure? I have never used a "smart tractor", so I have no idea. Sure you can do all the work with a 1960s tractor, the improvement is incremental compared to using a donkey, but apparently there is such a thing as an improvement coming from software.
- djyaz1200 10y agoA middle solution here is in order. If you buy a John Deere tractor or Cisco router you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it if you remove all of that companies branding from it. Leaving their brand on it confers a promise of a certain level of standardization/reliability compromised by DIY repairs/mods.
- rl3 10y agoYeah. The painstaking removal of all branding on something you own, just so you can have the right to repair it—because it's of substandard quality in the first place. Sounds fun.
- YCode 10y agoIsn't there already a middle solution? You can do whatever you want, but you void the warranty.
- cperciva 10y agoThe problem with "you void the warranty" is that one person voids the warranty, then sells the equipment to someone else, and that second person gets upset with John Deere when it doesn't work. On the hardware side, we have "warranty void if seal broken"; but there's no easy way for someone buying used farm equipment to know if someone messed with the software.
- jinzo 10y agoYes it is? See Chromebook for example.
- qb45 10y agoWhat's so magical about CBs? With physical access, you can reflash the boot firmware and put unsigned OS images on them without any ugly devmode warning screens. The only alternative is complete lockout and walled garden, thankfully Google didn't go that route in this case.
- acd 10y agoOne could discuss the corporation taking away personal responsibility for actions performed for example harming the environment. In case of farming One could view it as the tractor as a piece of hardware with software. One licenses the software but should be able to tinker with it. Most inventors tinker if we as a human race are not allowed to tinker we will not innovate. Global warming requires a lot of invention and cooperation together or we will be doomed. A forsee farming tractors going the same route as routers. First they where propietary hardware routers running closed operating ststems. Then came propietary routing hardware mostly broadcom based running open software Linux for software defined networks. Then came facebook open hardware for seitches and open software. The same will probably happen with tractors. Crowd funded community constructed open hardware and software.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoTitle change, please? Boing Boing and especially Doctorow have a serious hyperbole problem, but even their original title didn't put Doctorow's words in John Deere's mouth. The quote marks are completely false.
- Pyxl101 10y agoI flagged the article for this reason.
- mintplant 10y agoYou're being downvoted, but flagging (and/or emailing hn@ycombinator.com) is the moderator-sanctioned method of drawing their attention to a post.
- reitanqild 10y agoDidn't downvote but still disagree a lot. Flagging off otherwise interesting articles is seriously annoying IMO. I'd say commenting or upvote if there is already a comment (and maybe emailing if necessary) is the solution.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dang 10y agoTrue, but the site guidelines also say "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Pyxl101 10y agoSorry. I commented to explain the reason for the flag. I wasn't sure it was obvious.
- 10y ago
- dingo_bat 10y agoBut I thought corporations are also people?
- agumonkey 10y agoTime to retire property
- rswail 10y agoPeople should start to distinguish between "Intellectual Property" and "Intellectual Property Rights". IP is not "owned" in the same way that tangible property or intangible assets like goodwill. What is "owned" is the rights to exploit the intellectual property. These ownership "rights" are granted by the state (US Constitution or in other countries, statute). What is being debated is whether those IPRs (which can only be licensed or sold outright) can be extended to cover the end user's use of the product that contains the IP. The DMCA doesn't say you can't do what you like to the product, it says you can't circumvent "locks" on the IP that enforce the licensor's IPR. That's a very contentious position and is inherently anti-competitive and anti-innovation. IPRs are provided by the State for specific purposes. Extending those rights beyond those purposes should be ruled either unconstitutional or against the best interests of society.
- jaclaz 10y agoAs I commented on another thread, the whole stuff is taken (without any need) to extreme points, that is ideology, what the farmers want is much less than freedom to tinker with their machines, they simply want to: 1) have their machine run (to do some actual work) 2) be able to repair quickly their machines when they break(and at a reasonable price) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14077327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14077327