Colorado Governor Signs Tractor Right-to-Repair Law Opposed by John Deere - Slas...

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• Re:

  Louis has put a lot of work into this even though it's only tangential to his own line of work. He deserves to be stoked and I hope he becomes emboldened to continue the fight. Hopefully this legislation will get picked up in other states and expanded to include other industries.

• Re:

  You spelled his name.... RIGHT! Good on you!

  Seriously, though, I'm all-for his endeavors in this arena. I wish right-leaning politicians would understand that "conservatism" includes repairing and re-using, not just buying a new one or sitting still while someone like Deere abuses their monopoly and DMCA laws.

  • Re:

    After finding out State of New York screwed him for over 7 years with an tax lien send to New Hampshire where he's never been to (thus denying him the ability to actually get business loan), he now search his name and his businesses including misspelling to make sure there are no more liens. He made sure that his current business is 100% new and not related in anyway to the old business (he knew State of New York will want to collect even after he closed the old one and start anew). The brother is free!

• Re:

  That's what I was going to say. It's scary that 25% or the house and 33% of the senate voted against this.

  • Re:

    I'd wager John Deere made significant contributions to their campaigns.

    • Re: Vote them out!

      My first thought was "damn, is it election season already?"
      It's that time of year where they count on America's VERY short short term memories to get them reelected, just like it has for many years now.
      This bill is great and all but there's still most of a year to get the teeth knocked out of this thing for $1000/tooth. Don't worry, they'll pay. They'll pay, we'll get fucked and the politicians get rich. Everyone important wins.

      Maybe in my lifetime I'll see us finally get tired of the masochistic tango we'v

• Re:

  ^^^ Exactly!

• Re:

  Exactly! Even if the democrats vote on issue issues that do not align with their constituents!
  Sheesh - you act like there is only one issue that people care about.
  But not to worry, 46 democrats and 19 republicans

• It'd be nice

  but people have lots of different issues they vote on. Gun control & abortion & Trans Kids in sports, etc, etc. There's a major moral panic & culture war being waged too, driving by 24 hour cable news & daily talk radio. So economics often get sidelined.

• Re:

  "And the idiots that elect them will get exactly what they deserve."

  And the rest of us will get the same, whether we deserve it or not.

• by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27, 2023 @01:34PM (#63481054)

  Like the farmers complaining about socialism and welfare queens while cashing those subsidy checks

  • No one ever accused them of having coherent worldviews.

  • • Re:

      No one said that. The point was about hypocrisy.

• Neither side is particularly great on right to repair. There was a bill in New York that was essentially gutted by the Governor [arstechnica.com]. Will you also generalize her behavior to the entirety of her political party?

  • Re:

    Neither side is particularly great on right to repair. There was a bill in New York that was essentially gutted by the Governor. Will you also generalize her behavior to the entirety of her political party?

    Once side is mediocre, the other side is awful.

• I cross references the house vote [colorado.gov] with the list of representatives [colorado.gov] and tallied it.
  
  Democrat: 40 yes, 2 no, 4 abstain
  Republican: 6 yes, 12 no, 1 abstain
  
  So 2/3 republicans didn't want this.

• Re:

  Or,alternately, the spin being placed upon this by reporting. Imagine the other spin possible: "Mostly democratic lawmakers push bill allowing dangerous repair rights for untrained users". Because really--that line didn't need to be put in, every bill involves elected officials making compromises of some sort.
  That high horse can apply to everyone.

  • Re:

    They aren't any more dangerous than any other vehicle repair that these farmers perform on their other equipment. Maybe try engaging your brain and viewing politics as a matter of philosophy instead of treating it like a team sport.

    • Re:

      Indeed. Not only that, most of this farm equipment never leaves the farm (some will be driven at low speed on public roads between fields), so it is not like these repairs are a threat to the public at large in any case.

• Re:

  Campaign to the farmers (and working class) but take campaign donations from big business. That's the new Republican party. But this strategy only works by bamboozling the voters. Which politics has known how to do for centuries.

• As if steam power farm machinery was safer.

  This isn't about interlocks. It's about a $20 sensor rendering your quarter million dollar investment a doorstop. Sure you can replace the part yourself but it won't function until the proprietary John Deere programmer tells it to. Don't worry a tech will be out in a few weeks.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    Don't forget about the $250 an hour, including travel, for the repair tech to plug in his laptop and authorize the replacement.

    • • Re:

        No, son. No. The employee doesn't get that fat $250 / hr. Not even close.

        • Re:

          Yeah, would be lucky to see $10 of it.

  • • Re:

      The average American Farmer is definitely smarter than you're giving them credit for.

      Tractors and Farmers are not Moths and Lightbulbs.

      • Re:

        And the average American farmer is totally against the DRM nataure of modern farming machinery.

    • and why does the sensor need to be paired?

      and why does the sensor need to be paired?
      why can't it get download config the main cpu on it's own?
      Why can the owner tell the main CPU the new part id number with out needing an dealer tech out there?
      Why can't the non dealer repair place get the tools / parts on there own?

      • Re:

        This is no different from "why can't I use different printer ink for my printer?" or "why do I have to use the expensive coffee pods in my coffee maker?" A lot of reason this makes some news is that the opposition here isn't from the typical home consumer but from a major business segment.

    • That 20 dollar sensor also stops farmer bob from firing up the machine and sticking his arm shoulder deep into the mechanism so he can use his 5 pound sledge to beat on somethi GGHGZZZZZZZRRRRTTTTT. *wet slippery tearing noises* BBBZZZZZZTTT

      We've had heavy farm (and other) machinery for decades upon decades to date.

      We've only had these locked down versions for the past few years....

      Were we having significant numbers of "bob chunk" accidents before John Deere decided to locked down their tractors where people couldn't self service....which again, was NOT that long ago and extremely prevalent?

      • Re:

        An academic article about hazards of farming..more dangerous than being a cop:

        
        
        https://extension.missouri.edu... [missouri.edu]–%20Each%20year%2C%20more%20people%20die,the%20national%20average%20for%20workers.

        • Re:

          Sorry i misspoke. Not an article - a web/blog post from a university.

        • Re:

          Has locking out farmers repairing this meant a reduction in these? it mentions ROP (I assume rollover protection) helps

          not right to repair.

        • Re:

          Yes farming is a dangerous job and always has been, but those deaths are not from farmers doing stupid things like sticking their hands into machinery. A lot of them are due to the very nature of farming - working outside on potentially rough/unstable/slippery terrain, working with large animals etc.

        • Re:

          Some of the most dangerous parts of farming have nothing to do with working on machinery. The easiest ways to die involve suffocation hazards. Climbing up to open silo doors frequently kills farmers because fermented silage creates gas that can quickly render someone unconscious. Manure lagoons create methane, which can catch people unaware and knock them unconscious at which point they fall in and literally drown to death in shit. Also a frequent killer is drowning in silos full of corn or beans, where fa

        • Re: I’m fine with this but

          Despite the copaganda, there are a lot of jobs more dangerous than being a cop. You donâ(TM)t see farmers shooting up their soybeans because they werenâ(TM)t being deferential enough.

      • Re:

        Farming is actually one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and working with heavy machinery is a big reason why. Farmers have a number of other things that make their jobs more dangerous. Almost by definition, they tend to work in rural areas, and they often work by themselves, so if they have an accident they're less likely to get prompt medical attention. They also have a tendency to work very long hours; tiredness and heavy equipment are a very dangerous mix.

        • Re:

          Without any doubts at all, adding DRM to farm machinery was not done for safety reasons.

      • Re:

        So how did farmers treat all the locking? They seem to have kept buying John Deere.

        And I am guessing that once one leading manufacturer does something all the other sheep follow.

        But there must be some reasonable non-locked Chinese machines that suddenly look much nicer. They break but they are cheap, buy 2.

    • Re:

      Farming is a dangerous job, but farmers are not as stupid as you seem to think they are.

      • Re:

        Whenever I comment on this topic I’m always on the opposite side of most on this forum. Let me try one more time

        
        
        I work in a physical science/engineering field that occasionally deals with high voltages, radiation, and poisonous chemicals. Occasionally, once once or twice a decade, some highly-educated idiot decides that they’re good enough to unwisely try and fix a piece of dangerous equipment. They defeat one or two layers of interlocks, stick their arm in, and promptly poison/irradiate/sh

        • Re:

          Having a PHD doesn't prevent someone being careless, reckless or lacking in common sense. All it shows is that they were able to complete studies in a particular field. Someone fresh out of studying may also lack real world experience, so while they have been taught the theory behind safety practices they could easily make mistakes, or fail to apply them correctly to the situation.

          There also tends to be a level of arrogance involved with risk taking. People may decide that the safety procedures are an incon

• Most farmers these days - the independent, family owned ones - are college educated, often with dual majors in finance and agriculture.

  Bluntly, they're better educated, smarter and harder working than you'll ever be.

  (Because all the stupid ones died long ago, stupidly, because farming has always been among the most dangerous jobs in the US [ishn.com].

  • Re:

    I'm not sure that I buy that farmer (owning, managing, supervising) is a 30% more dangerous category than farm worker.

  • Re:

    Also, even if the law allows for a farmer to fix things on his own, I am pretty sure the main scope of it is to allow for independent repair shops to set up and directly compete with the manufacturer's.
    Essentially, even if the owner didn't know how to get things running, you can have a guy that knows how to fix things properly whether it's a John Deere or a JCB or a Lamborghini or whatever, and that will probably be way cheaper and more readily available than the manufacturer, forcing the manufacturer to lo

  • Re:

    While I find some of his content a bit annoying, Colethecornstar on youtube is a good example. He is a young farmer, degree in finance, and talks in detail of all the prep work, planning, and extensive knowledge needed to run even a small farm efficiently. It is very interesting to see the challenges of modern day farming, and the solutions they have to come up with - as well as how EXPENSIVE it is. You dont just chuck some seeds in the ground and go pick them when its time to harvest. even the grai

• • Re: I’m fine with this but

    Your "poor grand pappy" has probably never been near a tractor and you're full of shit. You can only be sucked in if the engine is running and it cant run if the fuel pump is being replaced.

    • Re:

      Do you hear that whooshing sound? It's not a vacuum pump.

      • Re:

        Yeah, I missed the sarcasm. I shouldn't post late at night.

• The above is extremely condescending view of farmers coming from a laptop class. While what you describe would be likely outcome if YOU decided to fix anything mechanical, farmers tend to be (by necessity) also qualified mechanics. What John Deere was doing is locking them out of completing repairs not because of safety, but to generate revenue.
  
  Think of it this way. You are forced to submit your code and pay a fee to fix compile errors, even when you perfectly capable of fixing these yourself. It is like that, but with tractors.

  • Re:

    Or, you can't replace your graphics card when it breaks - only a qualified Dell technician is allowed to do this, please wait 3 to 6 weeks for one to show up.

    Now there is a lot of new and great technology in modern tractors, even at John Deere. They can sell the products on their own merits without being sleezy and adding this repair lockout crap.

• Re:

  Farmers were free to work on their own equipment before companies got greedy and locked them out of it. If there's an uptick in injuries and deaths from equipment, then maybe we'll get a few Darwin awards, but the rest of the farmers who know what they're doing won't be at the complete mercy of some corporation when their equipment breaks down.

  • Re: I’m fine with this but

    you'll start seeing ads to repeal the law.

    "(cue sad music) Bob is a 5th generation farmer. It's in his DNA. After Bob lost his arm when his tractor unexplicably started moving on it's own, he could no longer support his family and they lost the family farm. Vote YES to repeal this dangerous law that's killing and hurting farmers! Say YES for farmers safety and security!"...paid for by Friends of Farmers PAC not affiliated with any political party or candidate.

• Re:

  But the whole thingâs got a strong whiff of I-do-whats-I-wants-whenever-I-wants.

          This comment reeks of contempt - who the heck are you to be looking down on anyone? You wouldn't make it half the morning on a farm.

        They own it, they do what they want with it, they judge the risks for themselves, and it is absolutely none of your business.

• 3 hidden comments

• Re:

  So, because they didn't start with whatever toy you want to be able to break pretending you're fixing it, they shouldn't even try?

  • Re:

    No while its good it happened for farmers, they could have just done it for everything if they where not corrupt and catering to companies like apple.

    It should be a simple concept, my possession my choice if I want to break it, or even endanger my life by fixing it well that's my problem. And a company should not intentionally make it harder for me.

    But we should wait for another 20 year, possibly have legislation that reverses these decisions, all the while paying senators to take the smallest possible step

• Time to get creative then. The definition of agricultural equipment in the law:

  "AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT" INCLUDES:
  (I) A TRACTOR, TRAILER, COMBINE, SPRAYER, TILLAGE IMPLEMENT,
  BALER, AND OTHER EQUIPMENT USED TO PLANT, CULTIVATE, OR HARVEST
  AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OR TO RANCH;

  Let's see. Farmers used a smartphone (read: "other equipment") to check the weather and see if tomorrow is suitable for planting. It's now agricultural equipment per the definition in the law.

  A rancher over here just ordered some animal feed online using their laptop. So if they're using this "other equipment" "to ranch" then they are using agricultural equipment to do so.

  It's not my fault the law didn't specify that it had to be the primary or sole use of the item or that it only applies when used for agriculture (except aircraft - which is named as excluded if not used for agriculture in this law).

  • Re:

    Nice try, but none of those are used to "PLANT, CULTIVATE, OR HARVEST." They may be used to obtain materials or information used in that process but they are not used in teh actual "PLANT, CULTIVATE, OR HARVEST" steps. I suspect a court would not include them in the R2R list of covered equipment.

    • Re:

      Neither is a tractor. Whatever they're pulling behind them might be, but they don't do any of it. So it's very clear that in order for it to apply to tractors it has to be less pedantic than actually putting the seed in the hole to count as planting.

• Re:

  It's a chink in the armor. Getting agricultural right to repair can be expanded to other things in due time.

  We must keep pushing.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • • Re:

      Ha, an online game hasa quest called "A Chink In The Armor" and the game censors out the word by default:-)

• Landfill

  Another problem with limiting outside repairs is land-fill. If it's easier to repair things, then we don't have to dump away our gizmos every 4 years.

  • Re:

    That may be one reason the companies do this. Ie, I think my grandfather kept his tractor for 40 years.

    • Re:

      My wife already wants to turn me in for a new model.

      • Re:

        She can probably keep you for another decade as long as she keeps you lubed.

      • Re:

        That's because she's afraid you'll do the same. Relieve her of that fear.

• Re:

  The list of things the manufacturer is supposed to provide is from the legislation, but the legislation says they must provide "any" of those things the repairer needs. If you read the actual legislation rather than the summary, it's clear the company has to provide whatever the person performing the repair needs. For example:

  For the purpose of providing services for equipment in the state, an original equipment manufacturer shall, with fair and reasonable terms and costs, make available to an independent

  • • Re:

      The legislation does actually define "fair and reasonable terms and costs", though the definition is necessarily vague. One key thing is that it says the cost can't be one that would discourage or disincentivize owner or third-party repair. My guess is the wording is taken from existing laws in other areas.

      That is a key point. People act as if right to repair laws are something new, but they're far from it. The car companies tried to force people to go to dealerships for repairs, but car owners fought

• we can't give the dealer only AD domain login need

  we can't give the dealer only AD domain login needed to auth in the repair tools.
  But we can give out the installer files for them.

• Re:

  This is one of the reasons John Deere is getting replaced by Tata tractors for example. Similar features, cheaper cost, and no DRM so the farmers can repair themselves.

• Re:

  Colorado courts will have the right to try cases filed by the customers residing within their jurisdiction. Expect those courts to be very sympathetic to the plaintiffs. And generous.

  • Re:

    "Your honor, this tractor was never supposed to be used inside Colorado. According to our documents it was manufactured for a buyer in Kansas."

• Re:

  > That this state of supposed conflict is taken for granted, instead of being treated as a crime, is a fundamental problem and we need to fix it.

  True, and these old-school Republicans are a special kind of retarded if they think a Fortune 500 company working for its ESG score is actually on their side.

• Re:

  Good legislation coming from misguided individuals should still be praised based on its merits. You need to recognize this positive contribution or there won't be any motivation to seek redemption.

• Re:

  You do know one of the purposes of government is protecting me from your reckless decisions and you from mine, right?

• You must be kidding. I am around aircraft and farm implements and both start at 500k USD for just serviceable. The problem has been the EGT sensor goes out on 2021 Deere Combine you need a John Deere authorized representee to replace the sensor with a 12 week lead time. The EGT sensor goes out on a 2021 Cessna 182, any A&P shop or traveling van can get it booked, ordered and fixed in a week.

  A combine has a productive season of 3 to 8 weeks, beyond that it is a doorstop. Deere was in the position that their larger customers had 3 combines to keep 2 running (one was always in parts) and had the Deere rep visiting weekly during their season for software enablement. The appointment book was based on what you ordered lately from your friendly Deere dealer.
  
  For the smaller farms they were taking risk that they would need to hire contractors or friends to risk their machines in their crops at the last possible moment. Farmers were loading their 10 ton tractors on flatbeds to get new parts authorized.
  
  There is an entire open farm movement
  
  https://civileats.com/2022/04/... [civileats.com]

• Re:

  Lol. Have you ever tried to warranty a car that's been significantly modified? Good luck.

• Re:

  Most US farm equipment has no meaningful emissions controls. Only in California, of course, and even here there are more counties with exemptions than requirements.

• Re:

  I think you’re confusing farmers with brodozer truck drivers. Those people who literally burn money to pwn the libz.

• Re:

  The first thing farmers SHOULD do is stop feeding you, troll.