Why the Right to Repair is a Crucial Fight we Must Win
As margins in primary production agriculture become tighter, and dependence on mechanization and technologization, and automation increases the need and ability to repair and service this equipment – and modify it to individual operations’ needs increases. As such, the Right to Repair, and the access to diagnostics software, design schematics, and other resources becomes not only helpful, but also a requirement.
Recently, Mr. Schmeiser, the head of the Western Equipment Dealers Association penned an op-ed that raised the ire of many in the agriculture industry, both farmers and those that independently repair equipment and technology related to agriculture. In the article, Mr. Schmeiser repeats many of the half-truths, outright lies, and misdirections that the machinery manufacturers use to scare people, and especially, politicians from Right to Repair legislation. In fact, many of these arguments are reminiscent of days gone by in the software industry when companies like Microsoft thought they could corner the market and lock people into using only their systems, and be at the mercy of whatever the software maker’s legal team wanted to write into the End User License Agreement (EULA).
As far as Right to Repair Legislation goes, it has become a major issue in Europe, the US, and Canada. Right to Repair laws have even become a platform point for Ms. Elizabeth Warren, and Mr. Bernie Sanders in their Democratic nomination campaigns. It is also noteworthy, that while the fight rages on in over 20 states, some jurisdictions actually have such laws in place already, though they are admittedly fractures and do not cover all devices and industries. Massachusetts and the entire European Union come to mind. Even in the USA, some companies have endorsed and embraced the Right to Repair, including Motorola which makes repair kits for most of their devices and provides documentation on how to do such repairs – it has become another revenue stream for them.
The arguments of intellectual property theft are preposterous, as are the allegations that right to repair laws promote illegal modifications. First of all, the Intellectual Property argument has been used by Microsoft and other software companies, also. You see, in the software industry there’s an entire ecosystem of public, open to anyone, programs whose license terms (The licenses are often standard, like BSD, Apache 2.0, the GNU/LGPL, etc) allow for the modification, repackaging and even sale for monetary gain of the programs provided the documentation and source code is also published and freely available. This software has gained widespread adoption. Mozilla Firefox is open source. Apache, the web server that’s providing this web page for you to read is open source. Linux/Unix is open source. I wrote this document on LibreOffice, which is an open MS-Office type of application. After years of fighting in the software industry, companies like Microsoft, Google, etc now embrace the open source ecosystem, because it allows for vibrant development, new features, better and more stable and more secure systems.
The fact of the matter is, software to cheat emissions equipment already exists. Right to Repair legislation doesn’t help that. It also doesn’t change the fact that for low level programmers and hardware designers, reverse engineering systems to modify them is a way of life and happens every day. Not having Right to Repair isn’t going to stop people with the advanced capabilities to modify, create, and rewrite / rebuild systems, and publish the code and documentation to do so. What not having Right to Repair legislation means, is that when Mr. Farmer gets a cryptic error message, or a machine misbehaves, instead of being able to look up the CAN address of it, and finding out what sensor it is, on which bus and which subsystem he has to now call a dealership, have a technician come out, and do this very work for him. Technicians are expensive, service calls are rarely under $1500 anymore.
Further, when it comes to emissions defeat devices – those exist today. We don’t have Right to Repair, today. Again, this is when companies hire highly skilled people to reverse engineer and then modify systems. They then sell this information to the public. Not having Right to Repair does not stop this, and never will – it didn’t stop software designers from reverse engineering things in the 90s and early 00s and it definitely won’t stop anyone today.
Mr. Schmeiser also makes an interesting remark – about a producer’s seeding/fertilizing/harvest data being shared with those who buy the machinery on trade in. First of all, privacy and data protection is something we need to make producers aware of. Information is valuable, especially critical business metrics like yields, fertility, pesticide use, and even land locations. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with Right to Repair laws. I would hope dealerships delete all personal data from the computers of equipment on their lots. Unfortunately, in my own purchasing experience this is not the case. Further, if you walk into any auction yard, theres probably 25 combines there with yield and field data on them – including landlord and field names, crop type, year, yield, etc. This is today, without R2R laws. Finally, let’s make no mistake, with the advent of telematic systems, manufacturing companies aggregate all of this data from individual producers and then sell it to their “partnersâ€, it says so in the fine print of their own software.
The argument that an industry solution is always better than a legislative one is comical. That basically translates to the fox guarding the hen house is better than the farmer guarding his flock. That is rarely true. In this case, the industry solution includes:
• No reprogramming electronic control units or engine control modules.
• No downloading or accessing the source code of any proprietary embedded software.
As most know, if a CAN module anywhere on the system goes down, and needs to be replaced, it has to be “flashed†in order to work. The “industry†solution basically forbids that, which, in all essence, means the industry solution is to maintain status quo. This is un-acceptable. This is the very reason why we need to have R2R legislation.
The R2R debate is about far more than simply repairing equipment. As companies like Deere have made blatantly obvious. Manufacturing companies have made it very clear they don’t believe you own the machine you paid upwards of a million dollars for. In fact, Deere stated as much in a US court case. You merely own the iron encasing the software that makes it operate. Without the software it’s useless, and you simply own a license to use the software, which the manufacturer may modify, revoke, cancel at any time. This is the heart of the debate. I believe I own the equipment I buy. Once it is paid for, I believe we may do with it as we wish, so long as we abide by the prevailing laws. If companies believe their software is proprietary, then they should make the equipment in such a way, and with such documentation that an alternative software program can be loaded into it. After all, they do agree we still own the iron.
Let’s face it, Implement dealers and manufacturers are charging atrocious fees for parts and service. It is blatantly obvious when a machine shop can produce a one-off combine component for $90, that the dealership charges $780 for. Or when an after market d****r header canvas is $280, and the dealership charges $1150 for the same item. R2R allows for more alternatives, and creates a level, diverse, and far more competitive playing field for producers. In addition such rights cement the fact that we own the machinery we pay for – full stop.
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