https://doctorow.medium.com/john-deeres-repair-fake-out-79da4978f4c1
"Last week, a seeming miracle came to pass: John Deere, the Big Ag monopolist
that — along with Apple — has led the Axis of Evil that killed, delayed and
sabotaged dozens of Right to Repair laws, sued for peace, announcing a
Memorandum of Understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation to make it
easier for farmers to fix their own tractors:
https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf
This is a move that’s both badly needed and long overdue. 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:
<
https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8>
Like all DRM, VIN locks are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that criminalizes distributing tools to bypass
“access controls,” even if you do so for a lawful purpose (say, to fix your own
tractor using a part you paid for). Violations of DMCA 1201 carry a penalty of
5 years in prison and a $500k fine — for a first offense.
This means that Deere owners are locked into using Deere for repairs, which
also means that if Deere decides something isn’t broken, a farmer can’t get it
fixed. This is very bad news indeed, because John Deere tractors are just
computers in a fancy, mobile case, and John Deere is
incredibly bad at
digital security"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
