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

  10 years. We report our compliance every 60 days, then once a year, which is to say we have turned handing you your own machine into a paperwork schedule that runs through 2036. Any new repair tool we build, we only have to share once more than 50% of our dealers already have it. We decide when a dealer has it. We build the clock and we wind the clock.

Those small time farms mostly don’t exist anymore. Today farming is done on an industrial scale, and equipment manufacturers are catering to the big players. They need big, efficient equipment that is profitable to operate at scale and they’re willing to pay for it. Only the big farms can.

I wonder how much of this is just the manufacturers making more high end, complex equipment that is just difficult to repair in general as opposed to them maliciously designing things to be difficult to fix.

Keep in mind, increasing the cost to repair something lowers its market value. There’s a reason Toyotas are more expensive than Dodges. The market prices these inconveniences. It’s not in the manufacturer’s interest to do this.

I think the real risk here is that the equipment manufacturers will use these settlements and regulations to build crazy reporting and compliance requirements that give them a moat that prevents upstart companies from competing with incumbents in the industry. What they really fear is competition, not the loss of a few percentage points on their part sales and service profits.

$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.

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.

And for mighty HP and their printers, management needs to be put to wall and shot. There's no other solution.

[0]: https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/this-doesnt-break-the-m...

Their pen plotters and cutters are unrepairable and their mandatory app doesn't work without an internet connection.

where the bluegrass grows

where the right to repair

is made plain!

> Deere will now be required to make diagnostic and repair tools available to equipment owners and independent repair shops, not only its own network of authorized dealers.

In practice, this means Deere will now operate similar to auto manufacturers. They will make their proprietary scanning equipment, software, and manuals available… for a few-thousand-dollar/ month subscription.

You have options as to where you can replace the physical components… but still need to pay a subscription fee in order to use your vehicle’s full feature set or get access to the data you collected but don’t actually own. Your vehicle’s firmware is still locked.

They will make their parts available… but not necessarily to a common standard (we could have used a common bolt size or hose line, or specced a commonly available alternator, but we decided not to), making it prohibitively costly for third party manufacturers to compete on aftermarket parts, and keeping genuine part costs high.

You can (legally) work on the machine yourself… but work done without a licensed mechanic will likely void your warranty, or prevent you from using necessary software features.

Your local mechanic can now repair your equipment… but in order to do that work they may have to invest in not only scanners and software, but an odd handful of unique task-specific or custom tools in order to complete the repair.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a win. It’s high time that the FTC addressed Deere’s blatantly anti-competitive behavior. However, this isn’t a silver bullet that will save farmers from the rising tide of extractive capitalism, or isolate their tractors from nation state cyber threats.

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.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

--Isaac Newton