Cory Doctorow
Last week, a seeming miracle came to pass: #JohnDeere, the #BigAg #monopolist that - along with #Apple - has led the Axis of Evil that killed, delayed and sabotaged dozens of #RightToRepair 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
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Cory Doctorow
The MOU that Deere and the Farm Bureau signed is full of poison pills, gotchas, fine-print and mendacity, as Lauren Goode documents in her #Wired article, "Right-to-Repair Advocates Question John Deere’s New Promises":
https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-advocates-question-john-deeres-new-promises/
For starters, the MOU makes the Farm Bureau promise to end its advocacy for state Right to Repair bills, which would create a repair system governed by democratically accountable laws, not corporate fiat.
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Cory Doctorow
This all adds up to what Jay Freeman calls #FelonyContemptOfBusinessModel, an abuse of copyright law that allows a monopolistic corporation to reach beyond its own walls and impose its will on it customers, critics and competitors:
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
If Deere was finally suing for peace in the #RepairWars, well, that was wonderful news indeed - as I said, a seeming miracle.
But - like all miracles - it was too good to be true.
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Cory Doctorow
Because security researchers have to bypass Deere tractors' locks to probe their security, Deere can leverage DMCA1201 into a veto over who gets to warn the public about the mistakes it made.
It's not just security researchers that Deere gets to gag: the company uses its repair monopoly to threaten farmers who complain about its business practices, holding their million-dollar farm equipment hostage to their silence:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it
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Cory Doctorow
That's scary stuff, because John Deere is a monopolist, and a successful attack on the always-connected, networked tractors and other equipment it supplies to the world's farmers could endanger the global food supply.
Deere doesn't *want* to make insecure tractors, but it also doesn't want to be embarrassed by security researchers who point out that its security is defective.
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Cory Doctorow
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:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john
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Cory Doctorow
Like all DRM, VIN locks are covered by Section 1201 of the #DigitalMillenniumCopyrightAct (#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 #DMCA1201 carry a penalty of 5 years in prison and a $500k fine - for a first offense.
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Cory Doctorow
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 #VINLocking, 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
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Codex ☯️♈☮
@pluralistic
I fucking knew it! As soon as I saw the announcement a few days ago, I was like "too easy, no way, where are the catches!" Sure enough, its a tactic to stave off further degrading of their monopoly by offering the least version of what was asked for, full of tricks to get them back in the seat as soon as the public looks away. There can be no compromise with monopolists: tear them apart and put the pieces into the public trust!
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