
DIY Tractor Repair Runs Afoul Of Copyright Law - evo_9
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/17/432601480/diy-tractor-repair-runs-afoul-of-copyright-law
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joesmo
If he could actually fix the software, it's possible he could break the
digital lock to get there. And it would be illegal. So what? At this point, it
should be no surprise to anyone that just about everyone in America needs to
break the law on a daily basis to live. It's not news. Just don't get caught.
Honestly, I'm tired of reading articles about yet another everyday activity
that's illegal in the land of the free. If a solution was proposed, I'd be all
ears, but as it stands, no one has a workable solution for the abomination our
legal and penal systems have become. Otherwise, this is just another example
of freedom amongst too many to count. (NOTE: Some sarcasm present above.)

~~~
stcredzero
What's keeping this from being a campaign issue? The DMCA is a badly thought-
out pernicious law. It interferes with academic and research work. It
interferes with the independent DIY spirit of people like this farmer. It
means we effectively do not fully own our own stuff that we've paid for. Why
isn't this a campaign issue? Can someone paint me a picture concerning
demographics, campaign finance, backed up with data?

~~~
Phlarp
Campaign issues get made out of topics or concerns that statistically relevant
numbers of people consider a good enough reason alone to vote for someone,
these are called "single issue voters" \-- Abortion is generally the easiest
example as both parties use either side of the debate as a single issue
lightning rod and large numbers of people will ignore all other positions any
given politician advocates for or against, just so long as they are unwavering
on their commitment to protect [unborn life|a woman's right to choose].
Previously gay marriage was a similar issue, although that particular topic is
mostly moot at this point, at least as far as American politics are concerned.

Copyright reform, along with corporate tax reform, both get rolled into more
general economic concerns, the most prominent of which will always be
unemployment. Which rarely becomes a serious issue in campaigns unless the
jobless rate is particularly high.

Rand Paul and Chris Christie are both attempting to make state surveillance a
"single issue voter" concern, I imagine this would be the best place to
attempt to slip copyright concerns in alongside-- however, I doubt wiretapping
or copyright is a big enough issue to become a real driver of campaigns the
way abortion is.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Given how much the Iowa primary matters, and how much farming there is in
Iowa, there may be some leverage there to make it an issue on the national
stage...

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cconcepts
Opportunity for a startup to build a "hactor" that uses modern tech but is
open source and easily modified with support of online communities etc?

EDIT: I've got patent dibs on the name "Hactor"

~~~
gcb0
just like with cars bought by companies and rentals, construction and farm
machines are bought mostly with the warranty in mind.

just like in software, for every one nerd that wants to fix things themselves,
there are millions who do not. and those folks don't even change the oil to
not lose warranty. and newer models even phone home (to the dealer!) when the
engine is being abused. and it's actually sold to the buyer as a feature,
because the phone home system can be used in case of theft.

do you rater sell one hactor or a million tractors?

~~~
cconcepts
I would see the average farmer as a little different to your average
car/cellphone user. As the article points out, getting things fixed quick and
the ability to do it yourself for cheap are critical factors for many farmers
and an integral part of their daily lives.

I've worked on many farms and always spent a large chunk of my time fixing a
tractor or other farm implement.

~~~
gcb0
i know. but farmers with ONE tractor are mostly ignore by dealer/makers.

they mostly buy used. and couldn't care less about drm or dealer visits.

now if you have over a dozen they will send people in less than 4h and invite
you to expensive cocktail parties every quarter

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rebootthesystem
This sort of thing isn't unique to tractors. Our Haas Vertical Machining
Centers are great machines while, at the same time, being grotesque examples
of "no user serviceable parts inside".

This is ridiculous when you consider we have a group of electrical and
software engineers with 20 to 30 years of experience in just about all aspects
of technology, including real time embedded systems and robotics. In many ways
we are far more qualified to support these machines than the techs they send
over. I mean, we could actually design these machines from scratch.

No, you can't get tech manuals. No, you can't have access to internals. Yes,
there are a bunch of secret codes and you can't have them. And, yes, you will
pay $1,000 (or whatever it was, I forget) for an additional 16 MEGA bytes of
memory.

No, we are not eager to jump into a $200K machine to fiddle with it. We are
busy enough with our own work. It's about simple things. When a machine goes
down for some silly reason it'd be nice to be able to diagnose and get it back
up and running rather than waste a bunch of time waiting for a tech who is
going to enter a few secret codes to do the same. I've seen it done a bunch of
times and it is infuriating.

I also do understand that the typical big iron CNC user doesn't have our
profile. We are not a production shop. We have a well stocked CNC shop for
prototyping product designs, just like we have pick-and-place capabilities in
house. We are a product engineering firm staffed with highly experienced
engineers, not a machine shop.

I can see a company like Haas deciding "no way we are giving access to
internals to machinist". I get it. Yet, at the same time, they have no
provisions for opening the doors to more capable users. I don't even think
they have a class you can take to become qualified. Perhaps the tractor
industry is similar?

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foofoo55
How does the DMCA stop a tractor owner from replacing a faulty sensor, engine
part, or a drive belt? The article implies that the DMCA stops the farmer from
fixing even mechanical components.

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emeraldd
The problem is going to be getting enough information out of the machine to
actually diagnose what the underlying problem is. With the belt story, there
was nothing wrong with the belt but the computer thought there was. He could
have thrown a new belt on it (i.e. throwing money at the problem and try
again) but that wouldn't have fixed the problem. Heck, that might have been
the first thing he tried. Diagnosing an issue by replacing part after part
along the problem chain takes time and gets expensive fast making it
impractical for anything really serious.

~~~
joezydeco
But it's not like the farmer is trying to retune the internal tables of his
engine controller or override some kind of operation mode. He just wants to
get the fault code out of the system.

It seems like there's plenty of room for a middle ground here. Deere
_certainly_ could have opened up some kind of way for owners to get fault
codes out of the system, at least for things that are user-replaceable. Hell,
the UI should at least put up that message ("CHECK ENGINE OIL", "BELT BROKEN",
etc). But then the owner might not buy the replacement part from Deere, right?
Perhaps that's the real motivation here.

~~~
chinpokomon
But the replacement part and send out the field service technician. Deere
wants to own the service contract.

As another example, I had a check engine light on my car. It was ~$500 to
check the code fault and replace a sensor. If I had my own access to those
codes, I could have done the work myself for a fraction of the cost, but the
car manufacturer knows that I'm limited in my options. If I want to renew my
car tabs, I'll have to pay them and their service technician to do the work.
It's a racket.

~~~
sokoloff
That's the reason for the openness of the basic ODB-II protocol. You can buy a
sub-$100 code reader that can read all the basic powertrain codes and can
reset the MIL.

That and 2 minutes of Googling will point you in the right direction
generally.

My cars haven't seen the inside of a dealer's service bay in over 10 years,
other than for warranty or recall work.

~~~
joezydeco
But OBD-II only has to (by law) provide certain information to the reader,
mostly to do with emissions control.

If you own a BMW, for example, the detailed diagnostic information for the
rest of the car is sitting on their MODBUS, which is only readable with a very
expensive tool and software sold only to BMW dealers.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I think you mean CANBus. You can purchase very inexpensive CAN transceivers,
but you're on your own figuring out the messages. MODBUS is an industrial
automation relic (but like all things in ind. automation, still very popular),
and not limited to a particular physical layer.

~~~
joezydeco
Actually I meant MODIC and not MODBUS. MODIC is a variant of Siemens' D-BUS
protocol (not to be confused with the Linux IPC system)

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Zikes
Wasn't it last year that the Library of Congress made cell phones an
exemption? There was a big hullabaloo about jailbreaking being illegal up to
that point.

~~~
sp332
Yes, and that's a temporary exemption that has to be renewed every three
years. I think it runs out this year. [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/10/jailbreaking-now-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/10/jailbreaking-now-legal-under-dmca-for-smartphones-but-not-
tablets/)

~~~
Zikes
Ah, so it's been longer than I thought.

Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens if jailbreakers get that rug
pulled out from under them. It might drive a long-overdue reform of the DMCA.

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lumberjack
Since John Deere is so widespread in the US, the farmers could open a
cooperative dealership if only to get access to the proprietary tools. Then I
guess they'd have to file an anti-trust case against John Deere to force them
to hand over the tools but you cannot achieve much without legal action these
days.

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zardo
Engine manufacturers are required to make emission critical electronics tamper
resistant. Opening up anything that effects emissions is a violation of the
clean air act.

Vehicle control code is a separate deal, but liability is a nightmare. If the
tractor malfunctions and kills someone, who's fault was it?

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digi_owl
Welcome to the rentier economy...

~~~
fixxer
Disagree. This is the stage where generic consumers, not just techies, start
caring about the fine print and adjust spending habits accordingly.

~~~
scotch_drinker
Except that the generic consumer in this case is actually very specialized and
the market is very illiquid. There are only so many types of tractors you can
buy and I would imagine all of them have the software since it "improves"
efficiency.

There is an excellent book called "Shop Class as Soul­craft: An Inquiry Into
The Value Of Work" that examines this move towards things in our life that we
can no longer fix on our own. You can't change the oil in fancy cars because
they have no dipsticks. You can't fix the tractor because it has proprietary
software. You can't jail break your phone because it's illegal (or was and
could be again). Etc, etc. We are rapidly getting to the point where no one,
not even the historically self-reliant, can fix the things they supposedly
own. We don't actually "own" these things anymore, we are just renting them.
Or best case, we have them on loan until we throw them out for something
newer.

Whether all this is an improvement is a matter of discussion but there seems
to be no doubt that the concept of "ownership" is rapidly changing.

~~~
stcredzero
_We don 't actually "own" these things anymore, we are just renting them_

This seems to be a trend across even more of society than just products with
DMCA-laden micro-controllers.

Perhaps the focus of open source and hacktivism should be in an alternative
ecosystem for micro-controllers?

