I'm very glad to see farmers win the right to repair their tractors. It's a win for consumers against bogus #IP objections from manufacturers. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64206913
"#Deere abuses copyright law to force farmers to pay for official repairs — even when the farmer does the repair. That’s possible thanks to a practice called VIN locking, in which engine parts come with #DRM that prevents the tractor from recognizing them until they pay hundreds of dollars for a John Deere technician to come to their farm and type an unlock code into the tractor’s console."
"Under the agreement, John #Deere promises to give farmers and independent repair shops access to manuals, diagnostics and parts. But there’s a catch – the agreement isn’t legally binding, and, as part of the deal, the influential #FarmBureau promised not to support any federal or state #RightToRepair legislation."
"We…publicly call on John Deere to immediately resolve all of its outstanding GPL violations…by providing complete source code…that the GPL & other copyleft licenses require, to the farmers & others who are entitled to it."
@petersuber My father (a TV repair guy in Malibu) sued, on behalf of TV repair people across the state, Sony back in the '80s or early '90s over their practice of modularization of replacement parts. Even if something like a $0.50 resister had burned out one could only replace it by replacing an entire $200 module. My father won the case (I don't have a citation) but it seems as if it had never had an impact.
@karlauerbach
Kudos to your father for suing and winning.
Like most legislation, these new laws respond to a groundswell of public pressure. I wouldn't count out your father's impact. It may be one of many stories, but it's one and there had to be many!
The US and major car companies did this as well with their clunkers for cash project. Perfectly usable vehicles, and parts, destroyed, so that you can't repair your older vehicle. After 8 years or so usually they don't supply parts anymore, so you have to go to a scrap yard or try to find after market ones.
The price of used vehicles skyrocketed. And the shortage of chips didn't help either.
They want you to buy a new one (ha-ha) with all that computer software that can literally stop your vehicle cold. Do updates while you're trying to get to work, etc.
"Three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it."
But it adds this proviso: "Legislation should acknowledge the risks borne by unskilled repairers and allow original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to provide parts assemblies rather than individual components to reduce the risk of injury."
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