John Deere To Pay $99 Million In Monumental Right-To-Repair Settlement (thedrive.com) 47
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Drive: Farmers have been fighting John Deere for years over the right to repair their equipment, and this week, they finally reached a landmark settlement. While the agricultural manufacturing giant pointed out in a statement that this is no admission of wrongdoing, it agreed to pay $99 million into a fund for farms and individuals who participated in a class action lawsuit. Specifically, that money is available to those involved who paid John Deere's authorized dealers for large equipment repairs from January 2018. This means that plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents (PDF) -- far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%.
The settlement also includes an agreement by Deere to provide "the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair" of tractors, combines, and other machinery for 10 years. That part is crucial, as farmers previously resorted to hacking their own equipment's software just to get it up and running again. John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023 that partially addressed those concerns, providing third parties with the technology to diagnose and repair, as long as its intellectual property was safeguarded. Monday's settlement seems to represent a much stronger (and legally binding) step forward. The report notes that a judge's approval of the settlement is still required but likely to happen. John Deere also faces another lawsuit by the U.S. FTC, accusing the company of forcing farmers to use its authorized dealer network and driving up their costs for parts and repairs.
The settlement also includes an agreement by Deere to provide "the digital tools required for the maintenance, diagnosis, and repair" of tractors, combines, and other machinery for 10 years. That part is crucial, as farmers previously resorted to hacking their own equipment's software just to get it up and running again. John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding in 2023 that partially addressed those concerns, providing third parties with the technology to diagnose and repair, as long as its intellectual property was safeguarded. Monday's settlement seems to represent a much stronger (and legally binding) step forward. The report notes that a judge's approval of the settlement is still required but likely to happen. John Deere also faces another lawsuit by the U.S. FTC, accusing the company of forcing farmers to use its authorized dealer network and driving up their costs for parts and repairs.
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now lets bring these requirements into law, permanently, across all industrial and consumer devices.
Any obstacle to repair and maintenance other than the inherent difficulty of the operation is anticonsumerist and in the long run, economically damaging (and many of the inherent difficulties are as well, but we gotta start somewhere).
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Re:Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it should be. Although even with a law, RICO enforcement (for anything outside of political retribution) will have to wait until the U.S. gets a real Justice Dept. reconstituted to replace the current rump JD.
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You already had your AG with Merrick Garland. Why was it not done then?
The answer is the Democrats are just as owned/corrupt as the Republicans.
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* Even outside of that event, they're some pretty unsavory characters - see some of the recidivism since they were pardoned [wikipedia.org]
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
In some cases devices, even repairable ones, defend themselves against the economics of being repaired. I ran into this with a wet/dry vacuum recently. Kärcher is a company known for having every single part available to purchase individually. You can repair literally any Kärcher product. So when the switch (internal mechanism on the power control circuit board) broke I had the option of ...
Buying a replacement WD5 power board for 93EUR + 20EUR shipping (113EUR total).
Buying a whole replacement WD5 for 145EUR which includes 2 new filter bags (13EUR) and 1 new HEPA filter (18EUR), which brings the cost of the vacuum + all accessories minus the consumable ones to (145-13-18 = 114EUR).
So ... on a related note does anyone want a broken vacuum cleaner? Free to a good home. All it will cost you is nearly the price of an entire new one to get it working again...
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Option is not the correct word. I think it would be better so I had the "illusion of choice". Much like Apple's iPhone repair kit where they will send you a screen and 40kg of equipment they expect you to haul back to the post office when you're done, the choice ceases being a choice when there is a more viable path of lease resistance.
It's one thing provide spare parts and options, but quite another to put it in a price or complexity category that is beyond the reach of any straight thinking consumer. If I
Liability laws (Score:2)
Now lets bring these requirements into law, permanently, across all industrial and consumer devices.
Any obstacle to repair and maintenance other than the inherent difficulty of the operation is anticonsumerist and in the long run, economically damaging (and many of the inherent difficulties are as well, but we gotta start somewhere).
If we change the "right to repair" laws, we should also change the liability laws. If a home-repaired unit becomes unsafe and injures people, who is responsible?
In the case of farming equipment, suppose a farmer makes a repair to a piece of equipment and then his son is injured or killed by said equipment. Who is liable?
The company would say that the farmer took full responsibility once he modified the equipment, while the farmer could say that his modifications did not affect the safety of the device.
It's
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The question "who is responsible for accidents" here is no different from a thousand other "who is responsible" judgements. Unless you have some reason to think that a repaired John Deere tractor is more likely to cause accidents than a non-repaired one, this is just a distraction.
We have a legal system that addresses questions of who is responsible. If you don't like the way these decisions are made, you need to fix the legal system, because changing right-to-repair laws won't do beans to solve that proble
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RED HERRING: a seemingly plausible, but ultimately irrelevant point brought up to distract from the topic.
massive ecological issue + reward for bad design!! (Score:3)
Now lets bring these requirements into law, permanently, across all industrial and consumer devices.
Any obstacle to repair and maintenance other than the inherent difficulty of the operation is anticonsumerist and in the long run, economically damaging (and many of the inherent difficulties are as well, but we gotta start somewhere).
Anything that can't be repaired usually ends up in a landfill, probably leeching toxins into the soil. This is a massive environmental issue. Additionally, I hate how disposable goods propagate bad design. Things should be built to last. They should be repairable. If I am getting a $20 bluetooth speaker from the dollar store, OK, I have realistic expectations. However, it is heinous to make it difficult to repair a $3000+ laptop. I should be able to change the battery with nothing more than a screwdr
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Now lets bring these requirements into law, permanently, across all industrial and consumer devices.
Any obstacle to repair and maintenance other than the inherent difficulty of the operation is anticonsumerist and in the long run, economically damaging (and many of the inherent difficulties are as well, but we gotta start somewhere).
Settlement != precedent. Court decisions create precedent, settlements avoid them. Ipso facto this is not something that can be relied upon to determine future cases.
to provide for free? or to provide at high cost th (Score:3)
to provide for free? or to provide at high cost that they is more then what dealers really pay.
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In other words, (Score:5, Informative)
... plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents (PDF) -- far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%.
So John "nothing scams like a" Deere gets to keep between 47% and 74% of their ill-gotten gains, minus legal fees which are undoubtedly a small fraction of their total take. Who says crime doesn't pay?
It's good news that they have to provide the digital tools. However, TFA says Deere must "make Repair Resources—which permit Deere Large Ag Equipment to be maintained, diagnosed, and repaired such that they can be operated in the manner for which they were designed—available to every Owner, Lessor, and IRP on a license or subscription basis on Fair and Reasonable Terms". I say "fuck that noise". Deere should be forced to provide those things free of charge as an additional punishment.
I'm getting sick and tired of all the corporate fuckery that lets the bastards steal from customers hand-over-fist, then give back a fraction of what they stole and call the matter settled. Fuck John Deere and the tractor they rode in on.
Re:In other words, (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm getting sick and tired of all the corporate fuckery that lets the bastards steal from customers hand-over-fist, then give back a fraction of what they stole and call the matter settled. Fuck John Deere and the tractor they rode in on.
I wish I had points for you. JD has been FSCK'n farmers for decades. I can remember my grandfather ranting about them.
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Re:In other words, (Score:5, Informative)
Deere has been the most famous poster child of sticking it to the consumer and locking them in for a very long time. So it is startlingly good news that anything is happening... but it sounds like very little compared to their gains and damage caused. Also I don't get why just 10 years, these things last a long time. This kind of equipment can cost a lot of money per hour of downtime. (Caveat: I've worked on afterservice parts software for a big mining and construction machinery manufacturer... afterservice parts is like the razorblades business model multiplied by lots of expensive time constraints and logistics) Tldr; but what is needed is a law about afterservice parts. Are the owners of the equipment going to be able to buy parts from based on like Cummins parts catalog and run telemetry if that is a thing in Deere? After 10 years if their model's parts and software is no longer supported will they open source it, provide 3D design files or equivalent parts in major catalogs? Will they be able to only provide windows binaries that work with windows 11? Can machines and support packages be transferred? New machines need to become as maintainable as old machines, for as long as the materials last. Probably, they probably have a lot of ways left to fuck with people and still have a big incentive to do so. Not doing so will cut into potential profit.
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Does that change how you vote? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the answer is no then your rage is impotent and useless.
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unironically yes
if you're not willing to stop republican knuckle draggers then yes, all your cynicism is as impotent as your actual dick (and i guess thats why you vote republican after all... dick dont work)
Re:Does that change how you vote? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every time you get angry at somebody screwing you over in a systemic way the next question you need to be asking is, does this change how I vote? If the answer is no then your rage is impotent and useless.
As a Canadian, I always do my best to vote for the least of evils. However, here in Canada we're often stuck with "strategic voting".
In this system, we often have to choose between voting for folks who stand for what we want but who have zero chance of holding even the balance of power, and voting for the lesser of the other evils. In a vote where who's going to win is effectively preordained, I vote according to my conscience. In a vote where the lesser of evils could win, I hold my nose and vote for them.
And every time I'm faced with that choice, I so wish my country had pushed harder for electoral reform and implemented some kind of proportional representation. Alas, we have our own brand of Republicanism at play here; since Trump came to power we've taken to calling it "Maple MAGA".
I'm all for strategic voting (Score:1)
Most Americans vote based on who was in office the last time they got screwed over. We vote for the other guy. It literally doesn't matter how terrible or destructive the other guy is. If I'm having a bad time I'm voting for the other guy.
The problem is that creates a ratcheting effect. You're always moving towards the pro corporate direction because sooner or later if you're just voting for the other guy you're going to vote for somebod
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Wasn't this whole approach to "repair" that's being used here enabled by the DMCA? So I don't think we can say something like "crime doesn't pay" when this company has just taken a horrible law and applied it to profit making. Is what they're doing unethical as hell? Oh Yeah. Illegal? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong...no one should be doing business with a company that takes this kind of position ("screw our customers all day long 'till the cows come home") w/r/t such expensive investments that are typ
Cost of doing business. (Score:5, Insightful)
This means that plaintiffs will recover somewhere between 26% and 53% of overcharge damages, according to one of the court documents (PDF) -- far beyond the typical amount, which lands between 5% and 15%.
Anything short of 100% is merely a cost of doing business. This is no victory, this is yet another loss in the long history of losses against corporations.
Competitors (Score:1)
I just wonder why farmers have not yet migrated in mass to competitors.
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JD bought them or they do the exact same thing.
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Yeah, what competitors, lol.
Everyone I know in farming today (and I'm a descendant of farmers) owns John Deere everything. There is no other choice. They pay $200000+ (1 Mil+, I'm giving you low end) for combines because the choice is... that or IH or some other brand that has no presence where they live and zero maintenance or parts. Hey, those farmers sit in the cab and make money doing nothing, my cousin reads books, so it kind of pays for itself - laws require drivers, but everything is automated.
The catch: Lawyers get most $$, only 10 years ! (Score:3)
How does this improve Right to Repair? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Now Do Printers... (Score:2)
Right to repair is not a new idea (Score:3)
For the entire history of manufactured products, skilled mechanics could take them apart and see how they worked. Mechanical stuff is inherently open-source.
Then the rise of digital systems gave companies the ability to eliminate a right we have had for centuries.
We are not demanding new rights, we are protesting when old rights are taken away.
The answer... (Score:3)
to all this crap is what Cory Doctorow's been fighting for years: change the part of the DCMA that makes circumvention illegal, and the company can hit you with up to a half-million dollar fine.
Wait... $99 Million? Is that all? (Score:3)
At first I was like "Yay! A win for Right to Repair!"
Then it occurred to me... How much does an average John Deere tractor/combiner cost?
They can be $500 Thousand, or even a $1 Million each? Then this $99 Million "fine" isn't that much at all.
Also, they only have to provide repair docs for 10 years? So in 15 years, farmers will be SOL again?
Great. I feel like nothing was actually fixed here. The fee was too lo, the fix is temporary. John Deere got away with a great deal here, as they will keep their customers and recoup their costs in a matter of a few weeks.
The only way I see this as a positive is if John Deere, in the course of these 10 years of open documentation, discovers the benefits of happy customers and a diverse repair ecosystem. But I doubt it.
TLDR (Score:2)
John Deere still made a profit on their bad behavior -and that is in real dollars, not counting inflation or opportunity value of the money over the years.
The US has about 19.million farmers (Score:2)
So it about 200k for each farmer ... in theory, as 90% of that will go to lawyers.
Which import tariff actually prohibits importing German gear? No idea, are European/German or Japanese tractors "not good enough"?
10 years and then they get to lock it down again (Score:2)
it's like an "introductory offer".
any fixed period of time where things seem nicer is negligible compared to the eternity that happens afterward, so i ALWAYS ignore intro offers when calculating whether something is worthwhile in the long run.
ie: this is a non-starter settlement, for me
A victory against the dark side of capitalism (Score:2)
A victory for Lady Liberty. One for the Rebels! Next stop the corporate death stars. Lol.
Capitalism's good for innovation but when the prime motivator becomes greed and we need to regulate greed like we do as individuals and groups. Greed is is born out of fear and is ultimately destructive. Look at the damage a greedy US president can do. Our ancestors called greed a deadly sin for a reason.
Some call greed ambition, ambition can be good and bad. A great ambition is products built to last, built to be repai
Just another Deere John Letter (Score:2)
Dear John:
I'm leaving you. No more nookie. My lawyers will be in touch. I get the tractors and the farm. You pay the price.
Its not me, its you.
DOH,
Jane Doe