The FTC lawsuit for John Deere is considered a turning point for the right to repair

Today, the United States The Federal Trade Commission has sued agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company — maker of the popular John Deere green tractors, combines and mowers — citing its longstanding reluctance to prevent its customers from repairing their own machines.

“Farmers depend on their farm equipment to earn a living and feed their families,” FTC Chairwoman Lena Khan wrote in an article. statement along with Complete complaint. “Unfair restrictions on reform can mean farmers face unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvesting periods.”

The FTC’s main complaint here centers around a software issue. Derry places Limitations of its driversWhich means that some features and calibrations on their tractors can only be opened by mechanics who have the correct digital key. Deere only licenses these switches to its authorized dealers, which means farmers often can’t take their tractors to a more suitable third-party mechanic or just fix the problem themselves. The lawsuit would require John Deere to stop the practice of limiting the repair features its customers can use and making them available to those outside official dealers.

Kyle Wiens is CEO of the specialty repair retailer iFixit And an occasional WIRED contributor who first wrote about John Deere’s Reform aversion tactics In 2015. In an interview today, he noted how frustrating it is for farmers to try to fix something that has gone wrong, only to run afoul of Deere policy.

“When you have something that’s not working, and if you’re 10 minutes from the store, it’s not a big deal,” Wiens says. “If the store is three hours away, as is the case for farmers in most parts of the country, it’s a big problem.”

Another difficulty is that copyright protection in the United States prevents anyone except John Deere from making software that conflicts with the restrictions the company has imposed on its platform. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 makes people legally unable to counter technological measures that fall under its protection. John Deere equipment falls under this Copyright Policy.

“Not only are these companies anti-competitive, it is literally illegal to compete with them,” Wiens says.

Derry in the headlights

Wiens says that although there is a contract to reaction v. john deere of Farmers and Reform advocatesCustomers using the company’s machines didn’t see much benefit from all this rhetoric.

“Things haven’t really gotten better for farmers,” Wiens says. “Even with all the hype around the right to repair over the years, nothing has fundamentally changed for the farmers on the land yet.”

He believes this lawsuit against Deere will be different.

“This has to be the thing that does it,” says Wiens. “The FTC will not settle until John Deere makes the program available. This is a step in the right direction.”

Deere’s reluctance to make its products more affordable has angered many of its customers and generally drawn bipartisan support. Congressional support For repair in agricultural space. The FTC alleges that John Deere also violated legislation Passed by the Colorado State Government in 2023 Requires agricultural equipment They are sold in the state to make operational software accessible to users.

“Deere’s illegal business practices inflated farmers’ repair costs and degraded farmers’ ability to obtain timely repairs,” the lawsuit states.

Deere & Company did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Nathan Proctor, senior director of the Right to Repair Campaign at the advocacy group US PIRG, He wrote a statement Praise for the FTC’s decision. He believes that this case, whatever its outcome, will be a positive step for the right to reform movement more broadly.

“I think this discovery process will paint a pretty clear picture that their equipment is programmed to monopolize certain repair jobs,” Proctor tells WIRED. “And I expect Deere will either fix the problem or pay the price. I don’t know how long that will take. But this is an important milestone, because once the genie is out of the bottle, they can’t put it back in.”