> Deere must pay $1 million collectively to the five states for antitrust enforcement costs and will be subject to strict compliance oversight for the next 10 years.
$1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.
Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.
Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.
Not OP but I went through some data and John Deere makes 5B NET profit for the worse years. 10B for their best (only looking back 10 years). I wouldn’t be surprised these anticompetitive (as in anti “consumer”) has netted them north of 10B.
Last year was 5b net profit on 44b revenue. Attributing more than a tiny fraction of profit to the right to repair stuff is wild dreams, given the amount of physical goods they sell.
Nothing in their SEC filings shows anything mentionable about such claims. It does break out actual profit by company sectors.
This concept of percent of profits shouldn't be considered in the context of fines. For regulations to have teeth, punishments shouldn't just slap you on the wrist just because harmful practices weren't responsible for a lot of profit.
In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn't be fair at all.
Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
> Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.
The biggest loss to them is the right to repair stuff. They will be still making it exceptionally difficult to repair their stuff, and might even dip into exotic materials to make cheaper parts fail more often, but this is a bigger loss to them in the long run.
Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.
Bananas that stuff like this needs to get litigated in our society - if you asked 100 random people "should farmers be able to repair their equipment", you would get 100 yes's.
Except it is not the right question in a market economy like ours.
The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).
Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.
If you asked 100 people which question is more important, yours or mine, I don't think I'd get 100, but I'd probably get 90+. IMO, asking the dollar value of our rights isn't the "right" questions to be asking ourselves.
It is the right question to ask. The idea that moral questions should have a market value is itself a moral failing, so assuming you want moral principles to rule over the design of your economy (which.. you'd better; otherwise slavery is permissible), you should not allow such things to be up for debate.
Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.
Because they don't ask it like that. It'll be "Woke communists want to confiscate the money of enterprising businesses." Combined with some AI generated video of the right to repair supporters laughing in an evil way or something.
Until you tell them how easy it makes it to bypass emissions restrictions. My tractor was shipped with a screw turned down to <25hp to bypass emissions controls. I could turn that screw back up and have a ~35hp tractor, but of course, that would be illegal and make lots of environmentalists cry.
Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to prevent emissions tampering, and domestic companies more subject to US law were generally far more paranoid about it.
Right to repair doesn't change any of that. Farmers were adjusting that screw anyways, that was the entire point. I'm not mad at farmers for doing it, I'm mad at John Deere at cheating the system.
It's not John Deere that was doing that, just some Korean companies exploring the opportunity and importing to the US. John Deere is located in the US and too afraid of the whimsical interpretations of regulators to try something like that, I think.
There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."
If we could get our operators to just run regen when they should, it wouldn't be an issue. They don't mind filling DEF and we don't mind paying for it.
Tractors are legal above 25hp but it requires DPF, and at I want to say about 75, possibly more than that. Farmers generally hate DPF systems and will disable them the microsecond they get the right to repair.
>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.
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>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.
Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
If you're a US company the vagueness of emissions law likely prevents a US company from hazarding doing it and instead locking down the repair of their power trains to ensure emission compliance. Korean companies get away with it because they don't give much a shit if they're banned from import, it can always be washed through another foreign company. John Deere can't try that sort of thing since being a household-name US company is their bread and butter for commanding a premium in the first place.
======= re: below due to throttling ========
>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines.
Everyone is doing it on the import tractors with the screws. They are not doing it with John Deere tractors, which are locked down for emission compliance. John Deere is handicapped by the fact they're located in the US and regulators have more leverage on them to prevent the sort of right-to-repair which would enable emission bypassing.
>Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
What is happening today is people with John Deere are not able to unlock their tractor for repair and turn the "screw" like they can with import tractors. The very first thing they will do once they can "repair" is delete emissions controls. That's a big part of what the farmers were pissed about and why they wanted right to repair, they couldn't "repair" their tractor to not use DPF, etc on their domestic tractors.
As a tractor owner. Two things, the DPF & SCR (>=75hp) on a tractor is not a great idea --
1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm.
2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-100x less often. Further there are at least 2x more trucks sold per year
3) To run the SCR system, the engine had to run hot for like 20 minutes burning extra fuel and required DEF (yet more input costs)
3) The emissions they are trying to reduce with the these are likely not excessively harmful from a tractor; largely because most tractors who need an SCR system is >75hp, which also means they're typically used on a large farm (100+ acres). Which dissipates the risks substantially.
For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).
For reference, I was very much ready to bypass the SCR system, but decided against it to keep the warranty. It had nothing to do about "right to repair", I figured out exactly how to bypass it.
Right to repair doesn't mean they'll get the ability to install custom firmware for example, it just means they'll get the ability to flash it with the signed, official firmware. It doesn't mean they can DPF delete, it means they can install a new one if the old one cracks.
There's a cognitive dissonance on this site where everyone claims to hate this attempt at regulatory capture, yet they would do it too if it was their tech company and call it a "moat", and many are actively working towards that.
Great news, the fine is so small doesn’t matter, but curing the wrong does. My hope is this standard will apply to modern cars as well, repair manuals and the software tools to interact with the cars are also heavily restricted by the manufacturers.
It was always crazy to me that farm equipment was locked down. I almost understand yuppie buying an E-Class not working on their own car, but a farmer not able to work on his own tractor just felt so wrong. It made me wonder how John Deere was still so popular and seemingly beloved.
The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest.
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
As much as I hope this is a turning point, I’m not holding my breath.
John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods.
I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.
Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.
The suit was brought be Dems in a 3-2 commission vote in Jan just before Trump took office. I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
so happy to hear this, I know many farmers that went with other brands or used equipment without chips. most farmers I know just want pure mechanics anyway
Most movements don't start out big. They are won by small steps. Personally I want a law that allows people to bypass security measure after a company stop supporting the device. I have unsupported amazon echo, google home, and apple ipads that work perfectly well and I would love add custom software or even put a different os too.
"...Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops..."
This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.
Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.
He started a website called Consumer Rights Wiki to document anti-consumer practices.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
He's also involved with FULU Foundation which has a bounty of 25k to get Ring cameras working without Amazon's servers.
https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/ring-video-doorbells
Reminds me of old internet, when activists we doing it for The User.
$1 million fine for probably $10 billion in profit. I know what lesson I'd learn if my only personal value was maximizing shareholder value. The compliance part can be dealt with later.
Can you expand on this number or is it vibes-based? I'd be surprised if $10b profit was made from Service Advisor.
Anecdata; we've had a handful of problems with our tractor "computers" recently, and we haven't been charged a dime by the dealer. Our newest is 2018 model so definitely not covered by warranty.
Nothing in their SEC filings shows anything mentionable about such claims. It does break out actual profit by company sectors.
At a minimum, you'd have to break out profit from equipment sales vs service contracts.
In that scenario, a lot of growth companies or just poorly performing companies could just say "sorry, we don't make any profit, so our maximum fine is $10," and obviously that wouldn't be fair at all.
Fines should really be about "what size fine will be a deterrent for this company?"
To a degree. But it also has to be commensurate to the actual market size and impact. If an Amazon releases a defective dog toy that is bought by 10 people, it’d be unreasonable to fine them $100 billion dollars just because they’re a huge company.
Copy-pasting AI output is uninteresting and rude.
Unfortunately, I hate that they got away with such a low AF fine.
The right question is "what is the value (in dollars) of the right for farmers to repair their equipment".
If John Deere values it more than farmers, then they will sell tractors that farmers can't repair on their own, hoping to earn more on repairs rather than easier to repair tractors that are more expensive up front. Basic market economy.
It only needs to be litigated when there is a threat to the market itself (ex: monopolies) or when there are greater concerns (ex: the environment).
Here, it is a little bit of both. That John Deere is in a monopoly position, so a more repairable competitor can't develop (debated), that agriculture is critical (literally life and death) and John Deere has too much power over it, and if the "right to repair" is a fundamental right.
Although perhaps your disagreement is over whether this is a moral issue, in which case, fine, but let's be clear that that's what we're disagreeing over.
Opening up John Deere tractors for right to repair virtually assures they will ~all be doing emissions deletes. Part of their lock-down was profit seeking, but the other half is that different vendors had different ideas interpretations of the law about how locked down the system had to be to prevent emissions tampering, and domestic companies more subject to US law were generally far more paranoid about it.
There was no "screw" for the commercial John Deere tractors with emissions controls, that I know of, as that was locked down to prevent "repair."
Anyone in the room care to volunteer?
>Then why even manufacture them and cripple them?
They cripple them because they know people want bigger tractor without emission control so they sell it as a less powerful tractor and then just expect people to break the law and turn the screw, and everybody is happy.
========= re: below due to throttling ========
>Thankfully, it's not illegal to own a screwdriver and nothing changes there. There's absolutely no relevance between right to repair (not right to break emission laws!) and the situation you describe.
There is because on the John Deere tractors you can't set the "screw" unless you have right to repair the engine system. John Deere has no screw because they're in the US and they're too afraid of US regulators.
It sounds like you are saying everyone is doing it today, so denying the right to repair doesn't affect the situation.
======= re: below due to throttling ========
>You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines.
Everyone is doing it on the import tractors with the screws. They are not doing it with John Deere tractors, which are locked down for emission compliance. John Deere is handicapped by the fact they're located in the US and regulators have more leverage on them to prevent the sort of right-to-repair which would enable emission bypassing.
>Do what? What is not happening today that you think would happen if people were given the right to repair?
What is happening today is people with John Deere are not able to unlock their tractor for repair and turn the "screw" like they can with import tractors. The very first thing they will do once they can "repair" is delete emissions controls. That's a big part of what the farmers were pissed about and why they wanted right to repair, they couldn't "repair" their tractor to not use DPF, etc on their domestic tractors.
You pretty clearly said everyone is currently bypassing this, otherwise companies would not be putting in larger engines. Is that wrong?
1) Tractors are typically owned by low margin businesses (i.e. farmers) that need to be repaired in the field AND need to be repaired quickly, else you loose a crop. Adding complexity to tractors literally can cost the farm.
2) The actual emissions reduced is questionable. Tractors run significantly less than a truck, like 50-100x less often. Further there are at least 2x more trucks sold per year
3) To run the SCR system, the engine had to run hot for like 20 minutes burning extra fuel and required DEF (yet more input costs)
3) The emissions they are trying to reduce with the these are likely not excessively harmful from a tractor; largely because most tractors who need an SCR system is >75hp, which also means they're typically used on a large farm (100+ acres). Which dissipates the risks substantially.
For reference my 2022 Kubota tractor repeatedly had issues with the DPF / SCR system, mostly the software to enforce environmental rules. This lost us ~$20k one year due to the tractor being knocked out for a week (I was mid-cut for 140 acre hay, rained & rotted in the field post-cut).
For reference, I was very much ready to bypass the SCR system, but decided against it to keep the warranty. It had nothing to do about "right to repair", I figured out exactly how to bypass it.
Surely I can’t be understanding that correctly given your overall position.
[0]: https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
--Isaac Newton
John Deere was one of the most egregious offenders in the right-to-repair movement, especially with how expensive their tractors are. There’s definitely a difference paying for the repair of a ten of thousands of dollars machine versus having to buy new AirPods.
I’m no expert in US law, but my understanding is an FTC settlement doesn’t create any precedent like a court case would, so I don’t anticipate this leading to other offenders, like in tech, being held accountable. Their support is too important right now.
Ultimately, I think the underlying motive for the administration is scoring a win for a core constituency, farmers. Tariffs and immigration enforcement have really harmed the viability of their farms, but at least the admin can say the did something for them.
Nevertheless, I’m glad that John Deere is being forced to provide parts and information to individuals and repair shops.
Don't underestimate the willingness of the GOP and the Supreme Court to kiss his feet.
> ...and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.
He's an expert at it.
They're a political football now and it's more of a feel good measure.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. They make the parts deliberately proprietary to prevent competition. The classic example is curved cabin windows instead of flat commodity glass.
Laissez-faire capitalism is efficient at extraction not productivity.
Are automobiles using curved windshields so they have a stranglehold on the replacement windshield market?
Your example doesn't pass my sniff test.
It’s also stronger.