The "Right to Repair" Movement: Why American Farmers Are Hacking Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Mon Feb 5, 2018, 02:58 PM - Edit history (2)

I don't know where to put this at DU. "Automobile Enthusiasts" seems like the most appropriate place.

This reminds me of Keurig's attempt to force people to use no brand of coffee other than that sold by Keurig in its coffee makers. People hacked that too.

I have a clothes washer that's acting up, and only this morning did I learn that there's an LED just above the motor that flashes out an error code.

Read the whole thread.

This thread is so cool and the minidoc is very great

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A year ago, I found out about a community of farmers who trade John Deere firmware hacks on forums and torrent sites. They're hacking their tractors because Deere has encryption keys locking down access to the software, preventing even simple repair

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A few months later, @laragheintz and I went to Nebraska to meet some of these farmers/hackers to make a documentary about them and the ongoing right-to-repair movement

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We finally released that documentary today. It's one of the cooler video projects I've ever been involved with. So happy how this turned out:

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For those interested, this is the original story I wrote about this:

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Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

Jason Koebler

Mar 21 2017, 4:17pm

A dive into the thriving black market of John Deere tractor hacking.

To avoid the draconian locks that John Deere puts on the tractors they buy, farmers throughout America's heartland have started hacking their equipment with firmware that's cracked in Eastern Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums.

Tractor hacking is growing increasingly popular because John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform "unauthorized" repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time.

"When crunch time comes and we break down, chances are we don't have time to wait for a dealership employee to show up and fix it," Danny Kluthe, a hog farmer in Nebraska, told his state legislature earlier this month. "Most all the new equipment {requires} a download {to fix}."

The nightmare scenario, and a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it.

[UpInArms]

1. I live in farming country ... and John Deere

Is evil ... the farmer, now, never really owns his equipment and is forced, similar to windows, to buy upgraded software every year just to start the tractor ...

🤦🏽‍♀️