I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.
Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.
Video content, particularly on youtube, gets very little traction here generally.
I watch his videos, but not from links here and that is probably what you are seeing: those of us who might follow your link have already seen the video (likely via grayjay rather than youtube) and will skip over it to the next interesting new thing. People who don't already watch him will see “[video] (youtube.com), 1 point, discuss” and think “oh, another video that could be a few paragraphs of text which would be much faster to read than watch, that so far no one else has seen as worth interacting with, preceded by two unskippable adverts”.
A link to youtube is only going to get much attention if it is lucky to have a title that jumps out to a few people so it gains the first few votes and/or comments that get the ball rolling. Even then Louis' videos aren't going to get a hot debate going: most people either entirely agree so don't see the point commenting further, or they aren't the sort of people who are reading HN at all or are but don't follow video links.
But still, there are many many HNers who binge watch YT videos all the time, and share it here, or suggest YT videos as "dive deeper" links on many topics.
This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads.
And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.
The person presenting is also important. I may be interested in the topic but if I don't like the presenter or their delivery then I'm still not going to watch it. Text doesn't have this issue.
I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.
Monetization. It's incredibly hard to monetize text content, particularly these days where Google's search AI has all but killed clickthrough rates. Youtube however, that will reliably give you revenue share.
Unless the video is about an extraordinary natural phenomenon that can be seen, video (and audio) is strictly inferior to text for communicating information.
I watch long form videos on topics I care about. If I care about the topic, I likely have already seen the videos. But I'm not going to watch a 20 minute video posted to HN to discuss it. If it's not something I can skim over in 3 minutes, it's too long. Take the post we're on right now. You can read through the entire contents of the article in 1 minute.
Voting on hackernews is a bit weird compared to reddit. The whole UI is strange to me.
Having said that, I noticed that there is in general too much content to consistently e. g. vote or do similar actions. I was watching Rossman's video almost daily in the past; stopped doing so a while ago simply because of lack of time on my part. I need to choose more carefully where I invest my time. (Also, for some reason, when Rossman was in New York, his videos had a better punch; not sure if I am the only one noticing this but he seemed to have a better focus when he was still in New York, even though I understand he relocated, to stop getting milked by politicians in New York.)
Not needing to be at the top of his game anymore makes anyone lose that sharpness. As you just said, he doesn't need to fight New York politicians anymore.
I stopped coding for the past year or so and I'm considering going back because I definitely feel my own sharpness lost.
Sometimes the problems are so complex and entangled it's hard to fit solutions into sound bites (vis: taxes, healthcare(USA) and apparently product "ownership".
Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.
His video style is just fine, him and his cats. I don't mind the expletives as the people/companies he uses it against deserves them but I had instances where I couldn't show his videos to some elderly people because of the expletives.
I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.
I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone.
Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
> Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
I respectfully disagree. I do meet my heroes, I just don't expect them to have an aura of benevolence or to be kind.
What I've learned from meeting my heroes is that they are humans too, but don't necessarily need to be humane, and sometimes they are just that wonder trait they have and that's all.
I would, for example, like to meet Elon Musk but I don't expect him to drink tea with me and spend the whole afternoon rambling about tech. He's busy, I don't even expect him to shower regularly or whatever. He's probably focused on higher priorities, 100% signal, no noise (and yes, that includes preserving humanity by having multiple children as much as he can, going to Mars, etc.).
Extra props for tilting thw windmill that is tech behemoths funneling data to government agencies without oversight. Aiming at Amazon is certainly something not to be taken lightly.
Your "tilting at the windmill" phrasing is interesting. I don't get the sense from your tone otherwise that you disapprove of it or think it's pointless.
I took it as doing what too many people feels like tilting the windmill. As a society (and frankly in myself on too many issues) I notice way to much "well what can we do" defeatist attitude.
> Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years.
$1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.
Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.
Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.
Not OP but I went through some data and John Deere makes 5B NET profit for the worse years. 10B for their best (only looking back 10 years). I wouldn’t be surprised these anticompetitive (as in anti “consumer”) has netted them north of 10B.
Last year was 5b net profit on 44b revenue. Attributing more than a tiny fraction of profit to the right to repair stuff is wild dreams, given the amount of physical goods they sell.
Nothing in their SEC filings shows anything mentionable about such claims. It does break out actual profit by company sectors.
Admittedly I have never worked in the agriculture industry, but I have been a mechanical engineer for multiple industries before I became a software engineer (a good 5 years I was in a position where I quoted customers). You really cannot imagine that out of the 44B gross revenue and 5B net, that a "non tiny fraction" was not related to right the repair? Collections of receivables + Proceeds from sales of equipment on operating leases is north of half of the 44B gross. How much of that gross would have not existed should there been a third party market to repair and service exist products? I honestly can't give a number but I doubt its "tiny". Look at the car industry, about 20% of the global revenue is aftermarket. You simply cannot naively think that "right to repair" only effects the service contracts. Theres aftermarket parts and 3rd party repair shops that COULD have been a bigger market without John Deere's anticompetive practices.
Yup. The two things John Deere did was make it impossible to diagnose problems with software lockouts and they did software locks for common parts. Imagine, for example, needing to pay $1000 to replace an oil filter because you needed to buy the official John Deere oil filter and have the John Deere technician drive out to install it and flash the tractor to start up with the new filter.
That's what John Deere was up to.
Also, I'd point out that tractors are, by and large, actually pretty simple machines. At their core they are an engine and a hydraulics system. Not much more. The most fancy tractors will obviously have a lot of creature comforts in the cab. GPS, auto steering, AC, etc. But the actual things that do the thing are effectively just solid metal parts that plow through the field or cut down the crop.
Tractors, because they are so simple, but also because they all operate at lower speeds than other vehicles, are almost immoral machines. My family literally has a John Deere from the 40s that starts up just fine. We also have a Massie from the the 70s that still operates just fine. And our newest Massie from the 00s is still doing farm work. The only reason we got the Massie in the 70s was because it had more horsepower than the John Deere from the 40s. And the only reason for the 00s tractor was because it had a closed cab with AC and more horsepower.
It would not shock me to learn John Deere was also integrating some planned obsolescence to speed up the turn over of their tractors.
> Imagine, for example, needing to pay $1000 to replace an oil filter because you needed to buy the official John Deere oil filter and have the John Deere technician drive out to install it and flash the tractor to start up with the new filter.
Even in other industries it is common that spare parts and consumables have a very high margin (while the initial purchase has a much smaller margin or in some cases is even subsidised).
The most well known example is probably printer ink/toner. (Razors is another often quoted example.) But this applies to car parts too. I needed a new small plastic clip to my Dacia. I was quoted 100 SEK (about 10 USD) for that. I 3D printed a sturdier version that will last longer for less than 5 SEK in materials (less than 0.5 USD).
From that you can estimate the approximate margins many companies have for spare parts. Of course being able to prevent cheaper third party parts will seem enticing if they want to maximise shareholder value. And this is why we need regulation.
It's also absolutely no secret that fattest margins and profits for automobile industry is also made with "aftermarket service" - which include upsales and inflated prices for service intervals.
There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.
The net profit figure isn't all that relevant. But I would be completely unsurprised if they made significantly more than $1M via their anti-right-to-repair practices.
John Deere itself went far to prevent repairs and fought tooth and nail against it in the court - why would they spend so much effort on something that's not profitable?
The corporation you're defending is disproving your point by their own actions.
Repair is everything with such equipment. Be it an airliner, fighter jet, TBM, those big trucks in mines, factory robots ... any industrial machine that moves will, over its lifetime, cost more in repair and maintenance than its sticker price.
I talked to a hobby farmer once about a tractor. It wasnt cheap, but he spent more to biuld it a proper shed than he spent on the (used) machine. Leave it out in the rain/snow/mud all winter and it wont be there for you in spring. Maintenance and support is everything.
This concept of percent of profits shouldn't be considered in the context of fines. For regulations to have teeth, punishments shouldn't just slap you on the wrist just because harmful practices weren't responsible for a lot of profit.
In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn't be fair at all.
Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.
Fines are strictly punitive. The only goal of the fine is to change behavior, not to be 'fair'.
It's true that the fines differ per the act, but that's only because the act itself determines how much people would desire to continue it despite a deterrent.
The fine for jaywalking is less than the fine for speeding because (a) society doesn't want to stop jaywalking as desperately and (b) even a small fine of $25 will cause people in cities to follow the rules and not cross the road willy-nilly but with speeding even with the fine you may want to still speed hence why almost all states also give you only a few chances to break that law in a year before they take away your license.
---
You're supposed to collect damages on top of the fine.
Which is why John Deer is paying our almost $100 million[1].
An additional $50 million plus FTC oversight for 10 years is to ensure John Deer comply, and to set a standard for further fines if they do not comply. If they continue to willfully not comply, like some people continue to jaywalk or speed, the fines will drain billions or reach a point that the company will be dismantled.
Maybe $100B is too much for that particular infraction, but the idea of punitive damages has nothing to do with "fairness" or charging the real cost of the bad thing they did.
It's a deterrent. It says: "you did a really bad thing and I'm going to slap a huge fine on you so you think twice about doing it again". And "huge" has to scale with the entity paying the fine. It has to be an actual wound, not a papercut.
Depends entirely on whether or not you think Amazon actually caring about the fine and bothering to do anything to prevent it recurring is part of the goal.
If it is, the fine must be large enough to matter against the backdrop of corporate P&L. Courts have an entire category for this type of fine: punitive damages.
Posted in another comment but you cannot just think about John Deere's balance sheet. A whole other industry would have existed without John Deere's intervention but they were able to capture a lot of the GROSS revenue due to it. You can look at other non high litigation capture industries like automotive.
In 2025 John Deere net income was $4,998m. $1m is 0.02% of that. They make it in less than 2 days. Imagine making money in an unlawful way for years then paying only 2 days worth of salary.
I made an educated guess that John Deere is roughly the size of Monsanto so in the tens of billions category, which is usually enough revenue to play really dirty with senators, regulators, lobbyists, and customers.
This is a negotiated settlement. The FTC agreed to settle without Deere admitting wrongdoing. Deere did give up something far more valuable than the $1M by agreeing to the right to repair. You can argue that instead of accepting the settlement, FTC should have taken the risk of going to trial. But Deere agreed to change their practices without that risk.
The biggest loss to them is the right to repair stuff. They will be still making it exceptionally difficult to repair their stuff, and might even dip into exotic materials to make cheaper parts fail more often, but this is a bigger loss to them in the long run.
Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.
And how much they gave to behave is directly related to how much they donate to the election fund, because that is literally the world we are living in now, as every single tech CEO all know and behave as.
Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.
Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours.
The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).
Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.
If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.
It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.
But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require companies to follow, the costs of those regulations should be considered.
For routine repairs it seems very beneficial for farmers to be able to repair things themselves. But there’s a very long tail of problems where at some point the cost will become meaningful, and the benefits might not be that great.
There is an obvious way to do this that doesn't impose high regulatory costs. A simple rule: The customer (and their independent mechanic) has access to anything the company has access to. Now you're not forcing them to write new service documentation, only to not restrict documentation they wrote anyway to their own dealers. You're not forcing them to support third party replacement parts, only preventing them from inhibiting it through software locks etc.
You don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to not prevent others from doing certain things. Which is easy, because it's preventing documentation from being copied around or preventing independent third parties from making compatible replacement parts which requires active effort.
> It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.
It's actually so simple you answered it right here! It's John Deere's problem to comply with the regulations we as society require of them - that is the cost of doing business.
> If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It isn't possible for that to happen without one of your other concerns also being true, because the profits from preventing repairs come from the customers. So it's at best zero sum and in practice it's negative sum, because the manufacturer isn't always the most efficient party to do the repair, e.g. because the farmer who is already on site and does it themselves can get the equipment back in service faster than waiting for the company's mechanic to arrive.
Meanwhile in cases where the manufacturer is the most efficient party to do the repair, the customer could still use them even if nothing forced them to. So the fact of it happening is by itself proof of this:
> It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies)
Moreover, notice that this keeps happening with tech products. Since customers don't like it, you would expect a competitor to show up and make the exact same product but without the locks, so why don't we see that? The answer, of course, is copyright, a government-granted monopoly. The law prohibits a competitor from copying their design/code. So there's your monopoly.
But copyright is only meant to prevent the competitor from making a direct copy of their software and competing with them in the market for the original product. They're only supposed to have that monopoly. Leveraging that to monopolize the separate market for repairs is monopoly abuse, and applies equally to every company selling a product covered by a patent or copyright monopoly.
> The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
That is exactly right. That is why the punishment for not giving customers the right to repair needs to be in the billions, so that the value of giving customers that right is huge.
It is the right question to ask. The idea that moral questions should have a market value is itself a moral failing, so assuming you want moral principles to rule over the design of your economy (which.. you'd better; otherwise slavery is permissible), you should not allow such things to be up for debate.
Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.
Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to <25hp to bypass emissions controls. I could turn that screw back up and have a ~35hp tractor, but of course, that would be illegal and make lots of environmentalists cry.
Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to prevent emissions tampering, and domestic companies more subject to US law were generally far more paranoid about it.
Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.
The point is that when the firmware was locked down, it was vastly more difficult to bypass emissions restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Arguably they were taking compliance more strictly before this ruling.
It's not John Deere that was doing that, just some Korean companies exploring the opportunity and importing to the US. John Deere is located in the US and too afraid of the whimsical interpretations of regulators to try something like that, I think.
There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."
If we could get our operators to just run regen when they should, it wouldn't be an issue. They don't mind filling DEF and we don't mind paying for it.
The bigger problem is when the DPF system stops functioning properly. This happens quite frequently, and is (by design) not a user-serviceable system. Then you can't "run the regen when you should".
All of this to reduce "particulate" which is not the actual polluting part of diesel emissions, even though it is the part you can see. The polluting part is what you can't see.
The EPA changed its rules a year ago to allow measuring NOx emissions (which makes sense) instead of just measuring DEF consumption (which does not make much sense) before forcing an engine into "limp" mode, and in particular retrofitting a system to measure NOx and reflash the computer (including aftermarket solutions to do so) is no longer considered emissions tampering. This should have been done a long time ago.
Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't become a better place because of farm equipment DPF/SCR filtering. But emissions are the perfect mandate for manufacturers to make it impossible for the owners to own the equipment.
Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair.
>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.
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>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.
Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
If you want people not to have out of spec tractors that is a regulation and oversight issue, not an issue of locking down tech.
Right to repair argues the tech should not be locked down, it doesn't argue you should be free to break the law.
You are also free to remove the handrails on a set of stairs using a simple wrench, but if a building inspector shows up or someone falls because of it there will likely be consequences. The argument here is that the simple wrench isn't the problem nor is your potential ability to remove handrails. In fact removing them may be necessary in some situations. The argument here is, you should be able to decide when it is necessary, while also facing consequences if tou do so in a way that is potentially harmful to others and the environment.
If you worry about the environmental impact of people turning a screw in a tractor you need heftier fines and more random unannounced controls. This is btw. how gun law works in countries where they make sense. Own a gun? No you don't unless you store it correctly and have documentation of ammunition spent etc.
As a tractor owner. Two things, the DPF & SCR (>=75hp) on a tractor is not a great idea --
1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm.
2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-100x less often. Further there are at least 2x more trucks sold per year
3) To run the SCR system, the engine had to run hot for like 20 minutes burning extra fuel and required DEF (yet more input costs)
3) The emissions they are trying to reduce with the these are likely not excessively harmful from a tractor; largely because most tractors who need an SCR system is >75hp, which also means they're typically used on a large farm (100+ acres). Which dissipates the risks substantially.
For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).
For reference, I was very much ready to bypass the SCR system, but decided against it to keep the warranty. It had nothing to do about "right to repair", I figured out exactly how to bypass it.
If you're a US company the vagueness of emissions law likely prevents a US company from hazarding doing it and instead locking down the repair of their power trains to ensure emission compliance. Korean companies get away with it because they don't give much a shit if they're banned from import, it can always be washed through another foreign company. John Deere can't try that sort of thing since being a household-name US company is their bread and butter for commanding a premium in the first place.
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>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines.
Everyone is doing it on the import tractors with the screws. They are not doing it with John Deere tractors, which are locked down for emission compliance. John Deere is handicapped by the fact they're located in the US and regulators have more leverage on them to prevent the sort of right-to-repair which would enable emission bypassing.
>Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
What is happening today is people with John Deere are not able to unlock their tractor for repair and turn the "screw" like they can with import tractors. The very first thing they will do once they can "repair" is delete emissions controls. That's a big part of what the farmers were pissed about and why they wanted right to repair, they couldn't "repair" their tractor to not use DPF, etc on their domestic tractors.
tractor emissions are nothing compared to all the normal cars and planes. the long term solution is scaling up synthetic fuels or solid state batteries but its just not a big deal today.
i think everyone outside of the most hardcore greens will agree that consumer rights are more important than making emissions rules that are still in force harder to bypass.
Tractors (and farms) should be subject to regular emissions checks anyway, just like cars etc. Both to check for intentional tampering and wear & tear issues causing excess emissions. The party making the change is responsible for the violation.
...which has a neat overlap with e.g. chat control and online age verification.
Yes? But if you want to solve that issue locking down the tech is not the solution. The solution is to have an inspector show up unannounced and give you a hefty fine if that screw is set incorrect.
So if that is really an issue, apply the correct fix and don't push the blame on environmentalists.
Right to repair doesn't mean they'll get the ability to install custom firmware for example, it just means they'll get the ability to flash it with the signed, official firmware. It doesn't mean they can DPF delete, it means they can install a new one if the old one cracks.
Because they don't ask it like that. It'll be "Woke communists want to confiscate the money of enterprising businesses." Combined with some AI generated video of the right to repair supporters laughing in an evil way or something.
The same side can also say "Woke environmentalist communists want to stop you from tuning your vehicles or rolling coal." That will probably get even more support, given what I've seen of the political leanings of farmers and RtR supporters in general.
There's a cognitive dissonance on this site where everyone claims to hate this attempt at regulatory capture, yet they would do it too if it was their tech company and call it a "moat", and many are actively working towards that.
You might be a victim of the Goomba Fallacy[0] where you're seeing two opposing opinions from two distinct groups of people, but since those are expressed on the same site, it seems as if 'the site' is contradicting itself.
Just because someone wrote a post on a site with orange banner it doesn't mean they agree with other people that wrote posts on the site with the orange banner.
Let's learn the concept of "different people have different opinions", shall we?
I haven't done this with any of our technology. Of course, I'm also not as profitable as some companies and have much less control over trying to lock my customers in.
This does mean my YC application is far less likely to be accepted.
There's no cognitive dissonance. If it's not legislated against you're just being naive and kneecapping yourself by not abusing the rules. End of story.
"Right to repair" isn't some kind of little negotiated contract fiddling. A company can't agree to a 5-year right to repair. Right to repair is a normal freedom, like speech, like using everyday objects you buy or make, generally walking around, meeting people, etc. Don't let's get all twisted up here and start thinking some dumb-ass business plan is the starting point in our basic conceptualization of humanity.
Great news, the fine is so small doesn’t matter, but curing the wrong does. My hope is this standard will apply to modern cars as well, repair manuals and the software tools to interact with the cars are also heavily restricted by the manufacturers.
We need same for Lenovo Deere, John Dell ...
Soldered RAM's, soldered SSD's lately, batteries which have by purpose just slightly different size not to be interchangeable.
And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.
I don't like people calling out soldered stuff. By the way, soldered stuff may still be serviceable at 3rd party service centers, just not at every DIYers home. It will cost you quite some money, yeah.
There are laptops that have soldered RAM + Free slot for upgrade. But regulating that stuff is just stupid I think - there is a valid reason for manufacturers to try make things more compact, more streamlined etc.
Slots arw for upgrades, repair and salvage.
Almost no nowadays notebooks with soldered RAM have additional slot.
What of RAM takes 2 secocds with slot. Soldering lots of pins or reballing requires specialized equipment and skilled (and expensive) person.
I'm going to scrap 120 almost mint condition 8th gen i5 Thinkpads thanx to 8GB soldered RAM, which is no longer enough for efficient office work on W11 + basic corporate background apps.
With 1 fookin RAM slot, these notebooks would be perfectly fine for another 5-10 years.
Saw a video of Kia van where the presenter shows of a 3 piece bumper, a food vendor can buy a specific piece if he bashed one corner. Now car bumpers contain sensors and cameras and flush lights and a light hit can cause very expensive damage, and its brushed off with "compared to a 90s car, you can walk away from ...".
It was always crazy to me that farm equipment was locked down. I almost understand yuppie buying an E-Class not working on their own car, but a farmer not able to work on his own tractor just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how John Deere was still so popular and seemingly beloved.
It was always crazy to me that computers were locked down. I almost understand Karen buying an iPhone not coding her own apps, but a dev not able to deploy on their own device just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how Apple was still so popular and seemingly beloved.
My guess is there a few German or Japanese competitors in the market as well. And buying American is all well and good until you can get a better machine for less somewhere else.
Great Stary. I wish he could go after the large format printer industry. (The really big printing machines). Those machines are locked for service and require service contracts, and you still can't get under the hood. And when the company decides to obsolete the product, customers are thrown out on their backsides.
As much as I hope this is a turning point, I’m not holding my breath.
John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods.
I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.
Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.
We’ve got to be sure the manufacturers get a solid decade or two to profit off of these schemes, so that future manufacturers know it will be worthwhile perpetrating future schemes.
The suit was brought be Dems in a 3-2 commission vote in Jan just before Trump took office. I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
Most movements don't start out big. They are won by small steps. Personally I want a law that allows people to bypass security measure after a company stop supporting the device. I have unsupported amazon echo, google home, and apple ipads that work perfectly well and I would love add custom software or even put a different os too.
so happy to hear this, I know many farmers that went with other brands or used equipment without chips. most farmers I know just want pure mechanics anyway
Fifty years ago the average guy buying a tractor had a family farm with a few hundred acres. Equipment was smaller and had less frills because the John Deeres of the world were catering to those small time customers. There were a lot of them.
Those small time farms mostly don’t exist anymore. Today farming is done on an industrial scale, and equipment manufacturers are catering to the big players. They need big, efficient equipment that is profitable to operate at scale and they’re willing to pay for it. Only the big farms can.
I wonder how much of this is just the manufacturers making more high end, complex equipment that is just difficult to repair in general as opposed to them maliciously designing things to be difficult to fix.
Keep in mind, increasing the cost to repair something lowers its market value. There’s a reason Toyotas are more expensive than Dodges. The market prices these inconveniences. It’s not in the manufacturer’s interest to do this.
I think the real risk here is that the equipment manufacturers will use these settlements and regulations to build crazy reporting and compliance requirements that give them a moat that prevents upstart companies from competing with incumbents in the industry. What they really fear is competition, not the loss of a few percentage points on their part sales and service profits.
In the last decade, on a fleet of almost 30 Deere machines from lawnmowers to high-clearance sprayers and combines, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed the Deere laptop to diagnose a problem to fix it.
Good. However had, one question still remains: why did the US government not have this automatically put in place in general? The title refers to one company for the most part. The question is why the US government, which assumingly should work for the people, prioritizes private commercial interests over individual ownership models.
"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..."
This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.
Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.
The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Intellectual property is a broad swathe of different rights and they each have some merits and are worth considering separately.
The trademarks and the protected designations I believe help consumers to know what they're getting and protect makers against competition with inferior products which are superficially similar. So that's things like "Coke" is definitely Coca-Cola's product and not just whatever brown liquid the seller could get cheapest, British Beef isn't actually from America just relabelled for a higher price. Champagne isn't actually a sparkling wine made in California. You can buy cheap brown liquid, Californian Sparkling wine and American beef, but it's right for consumers to know what they're getting and for the vintners in Champagne to know some Tech bro's side venture Californian winery isn't shipping bogus "Champagne" made in the Napa valley that will compete with their genuine product on store shelves in London. If consumers want to drink sparkling Californian wine they can do that, there's no need to use the name Champagne worked so hard for.
The patents are most reprehensible. There the deal is the government gives you a (surprisingly long) exclusive right to make a thing, and in exchange you give up some information about how to make it. Lawyers have managed to finagle providing almost no useful information about "how" in exchange for these quite unreasonable exclusive rights, that needs at least substantial rebalancing. In software it's just bullshit and should go entirely, in pharmaceuticals you can argue about the exact rules more.
Copyright is the most interesting tension. In theory Copyright protects creators - and that seems great. In practice this unavoidably also benefits non-creator heirs "Knives Out" style but that's not really the worst thing in the world. It also though benefits publishers which are corporate entities and that makes no sense whatsoever in the modern era. That needs drastic reining in, if while we're in there we can ensure that the author's grandkids don't get a free ride for life just because grandma wrote this amazing book that'd be nice. Copyright expansion seems to have slowed or stopped during my lifetime, which is good, but it needs reversing.
Shout out to Louis Rossmann for doing a ton of work on Right to repair.
He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers.
https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells
I appreciate everything he stands for - he's on the right side of just about every issue. I just wish he could make more succinct and effective videos.
Personally I think if he did that people wouldn't pay attention. My experience is that when you complain to people about digital rights they just glaze over unless you walk them through all the ins and outs and the implications.
I'm one of the people who mostly ignores his videos due to their length and the 'old man angry ranting about things' vibe they give me.
I share his videos here but nobody seems to see them and/or care enough to vote; all I get is crickets. It's baffling to me. Examples:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48802162
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48395520
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47043208
Video content, particularly on youtube, gets very little traction here generally.
I watch his videos, but not from links here and that is probably what you are seeing: those of us who might follow your link have already seen the video (likely via grayjay rather than youtube) and will skip over it to the next interesting new thing. People who don't already watch him will see “[video] (youtube.com), 1 point, discuss” and think “oh, another video that could be a few paragraphs of text which would be much faster to read than watch, that so far no one else has seen as worth interacting with, preceded by two unskippable adverts”.
A link to youtube is only going to get much attention if it is lucky to have a title that jumps out to a few people so it gains the first few votes and/or comments that get the ball rolling. Even then Louis' videos aren't going to get a hot debate going: most people either entirely agree so don't see the point commenting further, or they aren't the sort of people who are reading HN at all or are but don't follow video links.
HN audience prefers text to video; videos rarely do well here compared to other sites.
But still, there are many many HNers who binge watch YT videos all the time, and share it here, or suggest YT videos as "dive deeper" links on many topics.
This. I never watch video posts. I can skim-read a text site in seconds to see if it's worth a real read. I can't do that with video, and there's always some ads in it, whether the author put them there or not. I hate ads.
And it's not just HN either, video is a very poor substitute for a well written article. Video can augment a well-written article, but it can't replace it.
I ignore video posts. Why would I spend 20 minutes watching something when I can read the same in one or two minutes?
I read inhumanely fast.
The person presenting is also important. I may be interested in the topic but if I don't like the presenter or their delivery then I'm still not going to watch it. Text doesn't have this issue.
I didn’t realise you were committing literary war crimes! Please read more humanely! Books have rights too!
No, if he reads humanely he reads slowly.
I'm not sure if you got it, that inhumanely != inhumanly. Where inhumanely is without consideration for the human race, whereas the other is non-human-like.
^This. I find it frustrating with how so many things seem to be moving to video, even simple instructions.
Monetization. It's incredibly hard to monetize text content, particularly these days where Google's search AI has all but killed clickthrough rates. Youtube however, that will reliably give you revenue share.
I ignore video posts because my video watching time is after-hours.
I browse HN at work in-between GH Actions runs, compiling and Claude thinking, so no time for videos.
These says I just ask YouTube's AI for a summary of the video. Then I can decide whether the presenter is worth another 20 minutes of my time.
I do that too, and meditate if YouTube wounded themselves by adding that feature.
View rates must have dipped for a percentage we don't know of, but definitely made a dent.
I read at talking speed so not as much to gain with text.
Agree. I almost never watch them when posted in comments. Sometimes if it’s a main article I might.
Oh that guy, I like him.
He puts his money where his mouth is too. Weighing in and challenging people to sue. Good guy, intense but good.
I think it is a shame youtube is forcing creators into longer videos
Unless the video is about an extraordinary natural phenomenon that can be seen, video (and audio) is strictly inferior to text for communicating information.
I watch long form videos on topics I care about. If I care about the topic, I likely have already seen the videos. But I'm not going to watch a 20 minute video posted to HN to discuss it. If it's not something I can skim over in 3 minutes, it's too long. Take the post we're on right now. You can read through the entire contents of the article in 1 minute.
I clicked on one, he was rambling about wearing sunglasses because of studio lights, seems like pointless drivel, so I stopped watching.
Have you tried SponsorBlock? https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
Voting on hackernews is a bit weird compared to reddit. The whole UI is strange to me.
Having said that, I noticed that there is in general too much content to consistently e. g. vote or do similar actions. I was watching Rossman's video almost daily in the past; stopped doing so a while ago simply because of lack of time on my part. I need to choose more carefully where I invest my time. (Also, for some reason, when Rossman was in New York, his videos had a better punch; not sure if I am the only one noticing this but he seemed to have a better focus when he was still in New York, even though I understand he relocated, to stop getting milked by politicians in New York.)
Not needing to be at the top of his game anymore makes anyone lose that sharpness. As you just said, he doesn't need to fight New York politicians anymore.
I stopped coding for the past year or so and I'm considering going back because I definitely feel my own sharpness lost.
I love his videos. He makes you feel like we can actually fight back and win. If he changed his style I think something great would be lost
Sometimes the problems are so complex and entangled it's hard to fit solutions into sound bites (vis: taxes, healthcare(USA) and apparently product "ownership".
Deere is a long way from the user accessibility of the Model A or B.
After this he should work on "Right to buy products that don't work against the user".
The videos work because they deliver also some entertainment. The signal that Louis really cares is strong in them
His video style is just fine, him and his cats. I don't mind the expletives as the people/companies he uses it against deserves them but I had instances where I couldn't show his videos to some elderly people because of the expletives.
The man is an icon.
Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.
Reminds me of a line from Tron, where the other programs ask Flynn in disbelief:
> You fight for the users?
I wish he wasn’t such an ass. Had a never meet your heroes moment outside defcon a few years ago. Not a friendly person and went from big fan to disdain when I hear his name.
I think it's a trait with these types that makes them what they are to begin with. They don't just turn it on and off for the bad guys, they're like this all the time with everyone.
Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
> Never meet your heroes is just great advice, same as it ever was.
I respectfully disagree. I do meet my heroes, I just don't expect them to have an aura of benevolence or to be kind.
What I've learned from meeting my heroes is that they are humans too, but don't necessarily need to be humane, and sometimes they are just that wonder trait they have and that's all.
I would, for example, like to meet Elon Musk but I don't expect him to drink tea with me and spend the whole afternoon rambling about tech. He's busy, I don't even expect him to shower regularly or whatever. He's probably focused on higher priorities, 100% signal, no noise (and yes, that includes preserving humanity by having multiple children as much as he can, going to Mars, etc.).
Extra props for tilting thw windmill that is tech behemoths funneling data to government agencies without oversight. Aiming at Amazon is certainly something not to be taken lightly.
Your "tilting at the windmill" phrasing is interesting. I don't get the sense from your tone otherwise that you disapprove of it or think it's pointless.
I took it as doing what too many people feels like tilting the windmill. As a society (and frankly in myself on too many issues) I notice way to much "well what can we do" defeatist attitude.
I agree with this. Louis has done a ton in the last decade and deserves thanks for sure.
he is one of the very few people who inspires me today.
Wouldn't it be easier to build an open hardware/source alternative to Ring cameras.
The point is there are already many millions of Ring cameras installed. Most people aren't just going to rip them out for open source ones.
> Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years.
$1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.
>probably $10 billion in profit
Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.
Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.
Not OP but I went through some data and John Deere makes 5B NET profit for the worse years. 10B for their best (only looking back 10 years). I wouldn’t be surprised these anticompetitive (as in anti “consumer”) has netted them north of 10B.
Last year was 5b net profit on 44b revenue. Attributing more than a tiny fraction of profit to the right to repair stuff is wild dreams, given the amount of physical goods they sell.
Nothing in their SEC filings shows anything mentionable about such claims. It does break out actual profit by company sectors.
Admittedly I have never worked in the agriculture industry, but I have been a mechanical engineer for multiple industries before I became a software engineer (a good 5 years I was in a position where I quoted customers). You really cannot imagine that out of the 44B gross revenue and 5B net, that a "non tiny fraction" was not related to right the repair? Collections of receivables + Proceeds from sales of equipment on operating leases is north of half of the 44B gross. How much of that gross would have not existed should there been a third party market to repair and service exist products? I honestly can't give a number but I doubt its "tiny". Look at the car industry, about 20% of the global revenue is aftermarket. You simply cannot naively think that "right to repair" only effects the service contracts. Theres aftermarket parts and 3rd party repair shops that COULD have been a bigger market without John Deere's anticompetive practices.
Yup. The two things John Deere did was make it impossible to diagnose problems with software lockouts and they did software locks for common parts. Imagine, for example, needing to pay $1000 to replace an oil filter because you needed to buy the official John Deere oil filter and have the John Deere technician drive out to install it and flash the tractor to start up with the new filter.
That's what John Deere was up to.
Also, I'd point out that tractors are, by and large, actually pretty simple machines. At their core they are an engine and a hydraulics system. Not much more. The most fancy tractors will obviously have a lot of creature comforts in the cab. GPS, auto steering, AC, etc. But the actual things that do the thing are effectively just solid metal parts that plow through the field or cut down the crop.
Tractors, because they are so simple, but also because they all operate at lower speeds than other vehicles, are almost immoral machines. My family literally has a John Deere from the 40s that starts up just fine. We also have a Massie from the the 70s that still operates just fine. And our newest Massie from the 00s is still doing farm work. The only reason we got the Massie in the 70s was because it had more horsepower than the John Deere from the 40s. And the only reason for the 00s tractor was because it had a closed cab with AC and more horsepower.
It would not shock me to learn John Deere was also integrating some planned obsolescence to speed up the turn over of their tractors.
> Imagine, for example, needing to pay $1000 to replace an oil filter because you needed to buy the official John Deere oil filter and have the John Deere technician drive out to install it and flash the tractor to start up with the new filter.
>That's what John Deere was up to.
Is that an actual price and the actual process?
Even in other industries it is common that spare parts and consumables have a very high margin (while the initial purchase has a much smaller margin or in some cases is even subsidised).
The most well known example is probably printer ink/toner. (Razors is another often quoted example.) But this applies to car parts too. I needed a new small plastic clip to my Dacia. I was quoted 100 SEK (about 10 USD) for that. I 3D printed a sturdier version that will last longer for less than 5 SEK in materials (less than 0.5 USD).
From that you can estimate the approximate margins many companies have for spare parts. Of course being able to prevent cheaper third party parts will seem enticing if they want to maximise shareholder value. And this is why we need regulation.
It's also absolutely no secret that fattest margins and profits for automobile industry is also made with "aftermarket service" - which include upsales and inflated prices for service intervals.
There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.
Do they mention about how much revenue comes from selling parts and maintenance? That is what is directly impacted.
Why would it be a "tiny fraction" of profit in particular? If they broke even, would we say they couldn't have made any money off of these practices?
Even a tiny fraction of revenue, on the other hand, could easily reach $10B. 4% of ~40B times 12 years = $19B.
The net profit figure isn't all that relevant. But I would be completely unsurprised if they made significantly more than $1M via their anti-right-to-repair practices.
John Deere itself went far to prevent repairs and fought tooth and nail against it in the court - why would they spend so much effort on something that's not profitable?
The corporation you're defending is disproving your point by their own actions.
Repair is everything with such equipment. Be it an airliner, fighter jet, TBM, those big trucks in mines, factory robots ... any industrial machine that moves will, over its lifetime, cost more in repair and maintenance than its sticker price.
I talked to a hobby farmer once about a tractor. It wasnt cheap, but he spent more to biuld it a proper shed than he spent on the (used) machine. Leave it out in the rain/snow/mud all winter and it wont be there for you in spring. Maintenance and support is everything.
While I suspect this is actually profitable for them, you can't attribute 100% of their profit to anti-repair activities.
At a minimum, you'd have to break out profit from equipment sales vs service contracts.
This concept of percent of profits shouldn't be considered in the context of fines. For regulations to have teeth, punishments shouldn't just slap you on the wrist just because harmful practices weren't responsible for a lot of profit.
In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn't be fair at all.
Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.
Fines are strictly punitive. The only goal of the fine is to change behavior, not to be 'fair'.
It's true that the fines differ per the act, but that's only because the act itself determines how much people would desire to continue it despite a deterrent.
The fine for jaywalking is less than the fine for speeding because (a) society doesn't want to stop jaywalking as desperately and (b) even a small fine of $25 will cause people in cities to follow the rules and not cross the road willy-nilly but with speeding even with the fine you may want to still speed hence why almost all states also give you only a few chances to break that law in a year before they take away your license.
---
You're supposed to collect damages on top of the fine.
Which is why John Deer is paying our almost $100 million[1].
An additional $50 million plus FTC oversight for 10 years is to ensure John Deer comply, and to set a standard for further fines if they do not comply. If they continue to willfully not comply, like some people continue to jaywalk or speed, the fines will drain billions or reach a point that the company will be dismantled.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-is-paying-farmers-99-...).
Maybe $100B is too much for that particular infraction, but the idea of punitive damages has nothing to do with "fairness" or charging the real cost of the bad thing they did.
It's a deterrent. It says: "you did a really bad thing and I'm going to slap a huge fine on you so you think twice about doing it again". And "huge" has to scale with the entity paying the fine. It has to be an actual wound, not a papercut.
Depends entirely on whether or not you think Amazon actually caring about the fine and bothering to do anything to prevent it recurring is part of the goal.
If it is, the fine must be large enough to matter against the backdrop of corporate P&L. Courts have an entire category for this type of fine: punitive damages.
Well 500 million alone would come from "software". Which is "required" to be up to date for diagnostics, to fix anything else. https://www.thedailyupside.com/industries/tractor-giant-john...
Posted in another comment but you cannot just think about John Deere's balance sheet. A whole other industry would have existed without John Deere's intervention but they were able to capture a lot of the GROSS revenue due to it. You can look at other non high litigation capture industries like automotive.
In 2025 John Deere net income was $4,998m. $1m is 0.02% of that. They make it in less than 2 days. Imagine making money in an unlawful way for years then paying only 2 days worth of salary.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DE/deere/cash-flow...
I made an educated guess that John Deere is roughly the size of Monsanto so in the tens of billions category, which is usually enough revenue to play really dirty with senators, regulators, lobbyists, and customers.
This is a negotiated settlement. The FTC agreed to settle without Deere admitting wrongdoing. Deere did give up something far more valuable than the $1M by agreeing to the right to repair. You can argue that instead of accepting the settlement, FTC should have taken the risk of going to trial. But Deere agreed to change their practices without that risk.
The biggest loss to them is the right to repair stuff. They will be still making it exceptionally difficult to repair their stuff, and might even dip into exotic materials to make cheaper parts fail more often, but this is a bigger loss to them in the long run.
Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.
Can someone explain to me why any farmer buys JD? It seems like $1000 oil filters is something farmers would notice and talk about in that community?
Many of the small & mid-scale U.S. farmers are choosing to buy Mahindra tractors.
They only have to behave for 10 years before they can go back to being hostile parasitic vultures.
And how much they gave to behave is directly related to how much they donate to the election fund, because that is literally the world we are living in now, as every single tech CEO all know and behave as.
Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.
Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours.
The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).
Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.
If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.
It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.
But the regulations that would require John Deere to change their practices and designs for repairability are not about your rights, they are about what we require John Deere to provide. And the more you require John Deere to provide, the more costs add up. When designing regulations that we require companies to follow, the costs of those regulations should be considered.
For routine repairs it seems very beneficial for farmers to be able to repair things themselves. But there’s a very long tail of problems where at some point the cost will become meaningful, and the benefits might not be that great.
There is an obvious way to do this that doesn't impose high regulatory costs. A simple rule: The customer (and their independent mechanic) has access to anything the company has access to. Now you're not forcing them to write new service documentation, only to not restrict documentation they wrote anyway to their own dealers. You're not forcing them to support third party replacement parts, only preventing them from inhibiting it through software locks etc.
You don't have to force them to do anything, all you need is for them to not prevent others from doing certain things. Which is easy, because it's preventing documentation from being copied around or preventing independent third parties from making compatible replacement parts which requires active effort.
This sounds like a reasonable approach.
> It is not so simple a problem. Should people have the right to do whatever they want with hardware they buy? Yes.
It's actually so simple you answered it right here! It's John Deere's problem to comply with the regulations we as society require of them - that is the cost of doing business.
That part is easy. How much we require John Deere to do to support people repairing their tractors is not.
> If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It isn't possible for that to happen without one of your other concerns also being true, because the profits from preventing repairs come from the customers. So it's at best zero sum and in practice it's negative sum, because the manufacturer isn't always the most efficient party to do the repair, e.g. because the farmer who is already on site and does it themselves can get the equipment back in service faster than waiting for the company's mechanic to arrive.
Meanwhile in cases where the manufacturer is the most efficient party to do the repair, the customer could still use them even if nothing forced them to. So the fact of it happening is by itself proof of this:
> It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies)
Moreover, notice that this keeps happening with tech products. Since customers don't like it, you would expect a competitor to show up and make the exact same product but without the locks, so why don't we see that? The answer, of course, is copyright, a government-granted monopoly. The law prohibits a competitor from copying their design/code. So there's your monopoly.
But copyright is only meant to prevent the competitor from making a direct copy of their software and competing with them in the market for the original product. They're only supposed to have that monopoly. Leveraging that to monopolize the separate market for repairs is monopoly abuse, and applies equally to every company selling a product covered by a patent or copyright monopoly.
> The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
That is exactly right. That is why the punishment for not giving customers the right to repair needs to be in the billions, so that the value of giving customers that right is huge.
It is the right question to ask. The idea that moral questions should have a market value is itself a moral failing, so assuming you want moral principles to rule over the design of your economy (which.. you'd better; otherwise slavery is permissible), you should not allow such things to be up for debate.
Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.
Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to <25hp to bypass emissions controls. I could turn that screw back up and have a ~35hp tractor, but of course, that would be illegal and make lots of environmentalists cry.
Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to prevent emissions tampering, and domestic companies more subject to US law were generally far more paranoid about it.
Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.
The point is that when the firmware was locked down, it was vastly more difficult to bypass emissions restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Arguably they were taking compliance more strictly before this ruling.
It's not John Deere that was doing that, just some Korean companies exploring the opportunity and importing to the US. John Deere is located in the US and too afraid of the whimsical interpretations of regulators to try something like that, I think.
There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."
Lot of armchair quarterbacking going on, on both sides. I'd love to hear an actual farmer weigh in on this.
Anyone in the room care to volunteer?
tractorbynet is one of the better forums for info on opinions on tractors by people that use them regularly
If we could get our operators to just run regen when they should, it wouldn't be an issue. They don't mind filling DEF and we don't mind paying for it.
The bigger problem is when the DPF system stops functioning properly. This happens quite frequently, and is (by design) not a user-serviceable system. Then you can't "run the regen when you should".
All of this to reduce "particulate" which is not the actual polluting part of diesel emissions, even though it is the part you can see. The polluting part is what you can't see.
The EPA changed its rules a year ago to allow measuring NOx emissions (which makes sense) instead of just measuring DEF consumption (which does not make much sense) before forcing an engine into "limp" mode, and in particular retrofitting a system to measure NOx and reflash the computer (including aftermarket solutions to do so) is no longer considered emissions tampering. This should have been done a long time ago.
Emission controls are the best scapegoat for Deere and others to lock down systems as tight as possible for profit. They don't care about emissions, the farmers don't care about emissions, the emissions happen on a fscking large field out of nowhere instead of rush hour city traffic, and tractors usually run at high power which makes a cleaner combustion with less soot (but higher nox): all in all, the world doesn't become a better place because of farm equipment DPF/SCR filtering. But emissions are the perfect mandate for manufacturers to make it impossible for the owners to own the equipment.
I don't understand, are 35hp tractors illegal under emissions rules? Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair.
>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.
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>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.
Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
Well, then there also must not be much relevance between lax guns laws and school shooters?
I get what you are (trying) to say, but lets be real here. Right to repair people (myself included) just need to own that it will have some downsides.
If you want people not to have out of spec tractors that is a regulation and oversight issue, not an issue of locking down tech.
Right to repair argues the tech should not be locked down, it doesn't argue you should be free to break the law.
You are also free to remove the handrails on a set of stairs using a simple wrench, but if a building inspector shows up or someone falls because of it there will likely be consequences. The argument here is that the simple wrench isn't the problem nor is your potential ability to remove handrails. In fact removing them may be necessary in some situations. The argument here is, you should be able to decide when it is necessary, while also facing consequences if tou do so in a way that is potentially harmful to others and the environment.
If you worry about the environmental impact of people turning a screw in a tractor you need heftier fines and more random unannounced controls. This is btw. how gun law works in countries where they make sense. Own a gun? No you don't unless you store it correctly and have documentation of ammunition spent etc.
As a tractor owner. Two things, the DPF & SCR (>=75hp) on a tractor is not a great idea --
1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm.
2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-100x less often. Further there are at least 2x more trucks sold per year
3) To run the SCR system, the engine had to run hot for like 20 minutes burning extra fuel and required DEF (yet more input costs)
3) The emissions they are trying to reduce with the these are likely not excessively harmful from a tractor; largely because most tractors who need an SCR system is >75hp, which also means they're typically used on a large farm (100+ acres). Which dissipates the risks substantially.
For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).
For reference, I was very much ready to bypass the SCR system, but decided against it to keep the warranty. It had nothing to do about "right to repair", I figured out exactly how to bypass it.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Is this prevented today or not by the denial of the right to repair?
It sounds like you are saying everyone is doing it today, so denying the right to repair doesn't affect the situation.
If you're a US company the vagueness of emissions law likely prevents a US company from hazarding doing it and instead locking down the repair of their power trains to ensure emission compliance. Korean companies get away with it because they don't give much a shit if they're banned from import, it can always be washed through another foreign company. John Deere can't try that sort of thing since being a household-name US company is their bread and butter for commanding a premium in the first place.
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>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines.
Everyone is doing it on the import tractors with the screws. They are not doing it with John Deere tractors, which are locked down for emission compliance. John Deere is handicapped by the fact they're located in the US and regulators have more leverage on them to prevent the sort of right-to-repair which would enable emission bypassing.
>Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
What is happening today is people with John Deere are not able to unlock their tractor for repair and turn the "screw" like they can with import tractors. The very first thing they will do once they can "repair" is delete emissions controls. That's a big part of what the farmers were pissed about and why they wanted right to repair, they couldn't "repair" their tractor to not use DPF, etc on their domestic tractors.
Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines. Is that wrong?
So replacing a part requires DRM but defeating environmental protections is as easy as turning a screw?
Surely I can’t be understanding that correctly given your overall position.
tractor emissions are nothing compared to all the normal cars and planes. the long term solution is scaling up synthetic fuels or solid state batteries but its just not a big deal today.
i think everyone outside of the most hardcore greens will agree that consumer rights are more important than making emissions rules that are still in force harder to bypass.
Tractors (and farms) should be subject to regular emissions checks anyway, just like cars etc. Both to check for intentional tampering and wear & tear issues causing excess emissions. The party making the change is responsible for the violation.
...which has a neat overlap with e.g. chat control and online age verification.
Yes? But if you want to solve that issue locking down the tech is not the solution. The solution is to have an inspector show up unannounced and give you a hefty fine if that screw is set incorrect.
So if that is really an issue, apply the correct fix and don't push the blame on environmentalists.
Doing that is already illegal and should be enforced using appropriate tools. We shouldn't be relying on unrelated technical measures to enforce laws.
Right to repair doesn't mean they'll get the ability to install custom firmware for example, it just means they'll get the ability to flash it with the signed, official firmware. It doesn't mean they can DPF delete, it means they can install a new one if the old one cracks.
Because they don't ask it like that. It'll be "Woke communists want to confiscate the money of enterprising businesses." Combined with some AI generated video of the right to repair supporters laughing in an evil way or something.
The same side can also say "Woke environmentalist communists want to stop you from tuning your vehicles or rolling coal." That will probably get even more support, given what I've seen of the political leanings of farmers and RtR supporters in general.
"Don't you believe in free markets and capitalism? It's their right to maximize profits." /s
There's a cognitive dissonance on this site where everyone claims to hate this attempt at regulatory capture, yet they would do it too if it was their tech company and call it a "moat", and many are actively working towards that.
You might be a victim of the Goomba Fallacy[0] where you're seeing two opposing opinions from two distinct groups of people, but since those are expressed on the same site, it seems as if 'the site' is contradicting itself.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-goomb...
Just because someone wrote a post on a site with orange banner it doesn't mean they agree with other people that wrote posts on the site with the orange banner.
Let's learn the concept of "different people have different opinions", shall we?
I wouldn't do it, your point is now disproven
I haven't done this with any of our technology. Of course, I'm also not as profitable as some companies and have much less control over trying to lock my customers in.
This does mean my YC application is far less likely to be accepted.
There's no cognitive dissonance. If it's not legislated against you're just being naive and kneecapping yourself by not abusing the rules. End of story.
Two different groups: the hackers, and the money people.
I heard someone say recently that one reason tech sucks is because the sociopathic narcissists domesticated the hackers.
Just look at this site now lol
This site was created by venture capitalists. The dichotomy was always there.
There's probably some truth to that.
"Right to repair" isn't some kind of little negotiated contract fiddling. A company can't agree to a 5-year right to repair. Right to repair is a normal freedom, like speech, like using everyday objects you buy or make, generally walking around, meeting people, etc. Don't let's get all twisted up here and start thinking some dumb-ass business plan is the starting point in our basic conceptualization of humanity.
> Right to repair is a normal freedom
Right to try to repair is a normal freedom.
Great news, the fine is so small doesn’t matter, but curing the wrong does. My hope is this standard will apply to modern cars as well, repair manuals and the software tools to interact with the cars are also heavily restricted by the manufacturers.
We need same for Lenovo Deere, John Dell ... Soldered RAM's, soldered SSD's lately, batteries which have by purpose just slightly different size not to be interchangeable.
And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.
It may very well be because of process too.
I don't like people calling out soldered stuff. By the way, soldered stuff may still be serviceable at 3rd party service centers, just not at every DIYers home. It will cost you quite some money, yeah.
There are laptops that have soldered RAM + Free slot for upgrade. But regulating that stuff is just stupid I think - there is a valid reason for manufacturers to try make things more compact, more streamlined etc.
Slots arw for upgrades, repair and salvage. Almost no nowadays notebooks with soldered RAM have additional slot. What of RAM takes 2 secocds with slot. Soldering lots of pins or reballing requires specialized equipment and skilled (and expensive) person.
I'm going to scrap 120 almost mint condition 8th gen i5 Thinkpads thanx to 8GB soldered RAM, which is no longer enough for efficient office work on W11 + basic corporate background apps.
With 1 fookin RAM slot, these notebooks would be perfectly fine for another 5-10 years.
Apple too. They solder in the SSDs and memory.
and the car
Saw a video of Kia van where the presenter shows of a 3 piece bumper, a food vendor can buy a specific piece if he bashed one corner. Now car bumpers contain sensors and cameras and flush lights and a light hit can cause very expensive damage, and its brushed off with "compared to a 90s car, you can walk away from ...".
It was always crazy to me that farm equipment was locked down. I almost understand yuppie buying an E-Class not working on their own car, but a farmer not able to work on his own tractor just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how John Deere was still so popular and seemingly beloved.
It was always crazy to me that computers were locked down. I almost understand Karen buying an iPhone not coding her own apps, but a dev not able to deploy on their own device just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how Apple was still so popular and seemingly beloved.
Brand name/heritage, and not much competition. I think there are only two US based companies left in business.
My guess is there a few German or Japanese competitors in the market as well. And buying American is all well and good until you can get a better machine for less somewhere else.
One day there will be a Chinese competitor to wipe them all out
Great Stary. I wish he could go after the large format printer industry. (The really big printing machines). Those machines are locked for service and require service contracts, and you still can't get under the hood. And when the company decides to obsolete the product, customers are thrown out on their backsides.
Thank you all involved! Bring it to our cars next! I'm looking at you, electric vehicles!
The settlement changes nothing [0]
[0]: https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...
Is this not about a separate class action lawsuit?
It is, yes.
As much as I hope this is a turning point, I’m not holding my breath.
John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods.
I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.
Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.
We’ve got to be sure the manufacturers get a solid decade or two to profit off of these schemes, so that future manufacturers know it will be worthwhile perpetrating future schemes.
The suit was brought be Dems in a 3-2 commission vote in Jan just before Trump took office. I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
> I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again
Don't underestimate the willingness of the GOP and the Supreme Court to kiss his feet.
> ...and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
He's an expert at it.
Good. It's a tractor, not some tiny glued-together tech gadget.
Shouldn't we be able to repair a tiny glued togethee tech gadget as well?
This is only getting this level of scrutiny because it's related to big ag, and John Deere is the worst example.
They're a political football now and it's more of a feel good measure.
Most movements don't start out big. They are won by small steps. Personally I want a law that allows people to bypass security measure after a company stop supporting the device. I have unsupported amazon echo, google home, and apple ipads that work perfectly well and I would love add custom software or even put a different os too.
damn
so happy to hear this, I know many farmers that went with other brands or used equipment without chips. most farmers I know just want pure mechanics anyway
1 million dollars? Like, less than 1 tractor after financing? How will they recover from this?!
Fifty years ago the average guy buying a tractor had a family farm with a few hundred acres. Equipment was smaller and had less frills because the John Deeres of the world were catering to those small time customers. There were a lot of them.
Those small time farms mostly don’t exist anymore. Today farming is done on an industrial scale, and equipment manufacturers are catering to the big players. They need big, efficient equipment that is profitable to operate at scale and they’re willing to pay for it. Only the big farms can.
I wonder how much of this is just the manufacturers making more high end, complex equipment that is just difficult to repair in general as opposed to them maliciously designing things to be difficult to fix.
Keep in mind, increasing the cost to repair something lowers its market value. There’s a reason Toyotas are more expensive than Dodges. The market prices these inconveniences. It’s not in the manufacturer’s interest to do this.
I think the real risk here is that the equipment manufacturers will use these settlements and regulations to build crazy reporting and compliance requirements that give them a moat that prevents upstart companies from competing with incumbents in the industry. What they really fear is competition, not the loss of a few percentage points on their part sales and service profits.
In the last decade, on a fleet of almost 30 Deere machines from lawnmowers to high-clearance sprayers and combines, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed the Deere laptop to diagnose a problem to fix it.
Well I guess you speak for everyone. Let's ban a persons right to repair.
1 Million isn't enough. The CEO should personally pay 1 million, the Deere corp should have to pay 100 M.
Good. However had, one question still remains: why did the US government not have this automatically put in place in general? The title refers to one company for the most part. The question is why the US government, which assumingly should work for the people, prioritizes private commercial interests over individual ownership models.
This should be extended to software We have the Digital Human Right to adversarial interoperability no matter the dimension/interface.
Good, do Apple next.
It's nice to see enshittification being stopped and reversed.
"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..."
This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.
Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.
Having operated a ~1995 7800 with flat glass and a ~2015 7270 with curved, I know which one I'm picking.
Are automobiles using curved windshields so they have a stranglehold on the replacement windshield market?
Your example doesn't pass my sniff test.
How is a curved window better on a tractor?
In this case, glare and reflections.
It’s also stronger.
It's more aero :)
I’ll believe it when I hear farmers telling me it’s true
The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton
Intellectual property is a broad swathe of different rights and they each have some merits and are worth considering separately.
The trademarks and the protected designations I believe help consumers to know what they're getting and protect makers against competition with inferior products which are superficially similar. So that's things like "Coke" is definitely Coca-Cola's product and not just whatever brown liquid the seller could get cheapest, British Beef isn't actually from America just relabelled for a higher price. Champagne isn't actually a sparkling wine made in California. You can buy cheap brown liquid, Californian Sparkling wine and American beef, but it's right for consumers to know what they're getting and for the vintners in Champagne to know some Tech bro's side venture Californian winery isn't shipping bogus "Champagne" made in the Napa valley that will compete with their genuine product on store shelves in London. If consumers want to drink sparkling Californian wine they can do that, there's no need to use the name Champagne worked so hard for.
The patents are most reprehensible. There the deal is the government gives you a (surprisingly long) exclusive right to make a thing, and in exchange you give up some information about how to make it. Lawyers have managed to finagle providing almost no useful information about "how" in exchange for these quite unreasonable exclusive rights, that needs at least substantial rebalancing. In software it's just bullshit and should go entirely, in pharmaceuticals you can argue about the exact rules more.
Copyright is the most interesting tension. In theory Copyright protects creators - and that seems great. In practice this unavoidably also benefits non-creator heirs "Knives Out" style but that's not really the worst thing in the world. It also though benefits publishers which are corporate entities and that makes no sense whatsoever in the modern era. That needs drastic reining in, if while we're in there we can ensure that the author's grandkids don't get a free ride for life just because grandma wrote this amazing book that'd be nice. Copyright expansion seems to have slowed or stopped during my lifetime, which is good, but it needs reversing.