
A right to repair: Why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple - missizii
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/06/nebraska-farmers-right-to-repair-john-deere-apple
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wheelerwj
this topic has been beaten to death to the point that there isn't a lot to
comment on anymore. But it's still a critical issue (even in 2017). so, this
is me, upvoting for visibility.

also, id go so far as to say that while we should have the right to
repair/hack our own devices, I think legally requiring the producer supply OEM
parts is a bit of a stretch. Should I be able to fix my tractor, absolutely.
But I don't know why a business would be incentivized to sell anything but the
entire device.

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AckSyn
> I think legally requiring the producer supply OEM parts is a bit of a
> stretch

I don't think it's a stretch at all. If they've already manufactured the
parts, requiring them to sell replacement parts to customers really should be
a thing. Holding them back because of shitty IP laws and strangling their
ability to get things running is bad form and anti consumer

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BEEdwards
I agree with the sentiment, but they may be doing JIT production and literally
only have parts to build however many units they build for a day.

Allowing third parties to make the parts is the way to go.

~~~
imglorp
They also need to keep the authorized service chain supplied as well. This is
why you can walk into your car dealer and they should sell you anything in the
fiche. This is what keeps your corner mechanic in business too.

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droopyEyelids
Wish there was a way to do ensure the Right to Repair without throwing Apple's
"Activation Lock" in the garbage.

Activation Lock greatly reduced the amount of thievery associated with Apple
devices, and I think it's been a tremendous boon to -humanity- (how? by
reducing the whole ecosystem of shit that grows around theft. Without Apple
products, it's a less viable 'career' for the disadvantaged, and the scum who
feed off them. It's like if half the grass in a field was inedible, it'd
support a smaller population of buffalo or something. )

[https://9to5mac.com/2015/02/11/iphone-
thefts/](https://9to5mac.com/2015/02/11/iphone-thefts/)

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daveloyall
I'm not sure how Nebraska's LB67 would defeat Apple's remote-wipe-for-lost-
phones feature. Would you elaborate?

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mustacheemperor
I assume the poster is not referring to remote wipe, but the fact that it is
literally impossible to crack into an iPhone associated to an Apple account
you can't authenticate. If an iDevice is iCloud locked and you don't have that
password, it's a brick.

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sqeaky
It is not literally impossible, it is just beyond the grasp of petty thieves
at the moment.

Wait until one guy releases a walkthrough on the the two pins you cross or the
steps to remove some chip and add a new (or worst case blast some part of an
SOC with a laser), then all the geek friends of those pretty criminals will
take a stab at it.

Its not like the criminals themselves are doing much with phones and laptops
they steal currently. They just sell them for pennies on the dollar to some
shop that won't ask questions. The shop wipes the machines, resets keys or
does whatever they will do. If the procedure is more involved the shop will
pay less for iPhones to offset their costs, which could still deter thievery,
but we can't expect it to always be "literally impossible".

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chadgeidel
I think it's slightly more complicated than you make it out. The FBI
presumably has the resources to create the "two pins you cross or steps to
remove some chip" and yet it still has to ask Apple for device access on newer
iPhones.

Either this ability exists, and the FBI is hiding it via creating large
numbers of device requests of Apple, or Apple is telling us the truth and the
iPhone is not easily hacked.

~~~
sqeaky
There is a difference between recovering encrypted data and making the phone
usable for a second person. One cares about circumventing crypto and the other
just wants to re-use a bunch of atoms.

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jackcosgrove
This is a big issue for farmers. I have family who are farmers and the secret
to their success is that they are mainly mechanics who fix their own
equipment. If you have to rely on other people to fix your equipment your
margins disappear quickly.

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hanselot
How many more Volkswagen emission scandals are hiding behind this ruse of
patent protection. Certainly on every market we will find a proportional
example, and if not then why so adamantly defend it? Surely this is just an
opportunity for more companies to say to their customers: "hey guys. We are
going to stand against fucking you for profit."

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wahern

      John Deere has gone as far as to claim that farmers don’t
      own the tractors they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars
      for, but instead receive a "license to operate the vehicle". 
    

Don't most farmers finance their equipment? If the resale value is low because
John Deere's policies make it difficult to use older equipment, then they
won't be able to sell tractors with high profit margins because banks won't
give them security. They're literally trading higher margins for more volume
sales, and begging their competitors to join them to a race to the bottom.

I don't have an MBA, but that seems really short-sighted. Configuring your
entire value-add chain, from R&D to sales to marketing, to focus on low-margin
volume sales sounds preposterous. I mean, volume will always be meat &
potatoes, but the darwinian struggle for high-margin sales is how you nurture
growth.

Once the small farmer is gone John Deere will only be able to sell to huge
conglomerates. Eventually those conglomerates will dabble with vertical
integration and cut John Deere out of the equation all together.

Seems to me if John Deere wants to stay relevant they'd do everything they can
to inflate the resale value of their tractors, and that necessarily includes
sustaining a high resale value in the used equipment market.

In a world of cheap financing it's easier than ever to keep farmers buying new
equipment, and more important than ever to maximize returns based on loose
financing. You shouldn't need a lawyer to hold a gun to your customer's head.
This obsession with maintaining control of their product after it leaves the
factory seems just so epically ridiculous. And that's before we get into any
of the minutiae of copyright and the uphill battle they'll face. Anything but
the strictest of controls over their software will net them absolutely nothing
at the end of the day except alot of pissed-off customers. It certainly won't
be an impediment to Chinese knock-offs, who have very capable software
engineers. Whoever is telling them that is so misinformed that I'd wonder if
they were taking payments on the side from the Chinese.

I guess this is why American manufacturing is slowly dying. I mean, we're
still the number one manufacturing country in the world, but despite
strategies like these, not because of them.

