Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors Because of a Repair Ban

[Music] we're gonna hook uh my laptop up to this combine and try to get codes out of it i guess i would say what i'm doing is hacking farms today use a tremendous amount of technology deer mates claims that you only really have the license to use their software and for someone to say they own the software pretty much takes away the whole viability of the entire tractor or piece of equipment the only person that can repair those tractors to a great extent is the dealership i mean look at the size of this machine if i had to haul this thing 100 miles every time something went wrong with it it cost a fortune i mean just to get it on a truck because a thousand bucks and by the time you get it hauled somewhere and get it hauled back you're too grand into fixing something maybe relatively minor what we've had developed is essentially a monopoly on repair [Music] we live in a disposable society when our technology breaks we replace it but the art of repair is still practiced by a select few in our tech obsessed culture tractors are the workhorses of agriculture but unlike the past the tractor of today is a complex computerized system that relies on embedded software to function while technology has made tractors more efficient it has made repair nearly impossible for farmers who need access to the software to repair their equipment we went to nebraska to meet the people at the forefront of right to repair a movement fighting large tech companies for access to the diagnostic software needed to fix our things [Music] [Applause] i am uh actually the fifth generation farming here on this this operation where you sit today we've been around for a while since the mid-1800s the kids laugh because she's my cat she follows me around more the big tractors over here we use for the day-to-day operations in row crop farming anything that requires a lot of horsepower a lot of traction you know those are both big issues for us a smaller tractors like this little guy here we use for maintenance of the yard we use them a lot these little tractors we use a lot in the vegetable operation this is the tractor that i learned to drive tractor on one of the things on growing up on a farm that happens is you learn to do everything very young as soon as i could sit on the very front edge of that seat and push that clutch in i learned how to drive and the beauty of that tractor in terms of repair is i can go anywhere and get parts for it we could tear this thing down and overhaul it in probably a week's time it's a different era for sure the earliest developments were in the engines and probably from the mid-80s you know we started to see computerized components and engines to the point where in the mid-90s essentially the entire engine is run by the computer and so now today all functions of the tractor are run by the computer the seat in that tractor over there is more complicated than this entire tractor as tractors have become more high-tech the repairs have become more challenging we do not have the ability to hook up a computer to a tractor to diagnose it to repair it or even to activate components that we may buy to put on that tractor particularly with older tractors we would we would buy used reparts and put on them to save money and today i can go out and there are used parts for these tractors these newer tractors that are available but if i put them on the tractor won't run this receiver is for the most part a perfectly functioning receiver okay the what this does is it receives satellite signals from gps satellites tcm in this is broken okay it's not functioning what we were told by deer is well we don't support this anymore so essentially what they did was they forced us to buy a new unit because they won't support this anymore and we can't get the repairs for it this is actually my house really i i work from a home i guess you call it but i got buildings i put up around here just so i could you know work from work from home this is my latest project i worked on it's uh we call it the luda crusher but it's a monster truck i built my business is ludicky diesel basically have a repair shop and what i do is pretty much mostly is just to repair john your equipment just because i used to work in the johnny dealership for 23 years and all the customers know me so they come in and it's been great if say it was actually a computer fault where the computer itself was damaged or or would not stop communicating and had to replace it i could physically physically replace the computer but the computers come basically brain dead so you have to have the software from john deere for this serial number tractor my biggest situation that i i can't fix everything you know every situation now is you know because i don't have you know john deere service advisor laptop you know i can't connect with equipment pretty restricted on what i can do as far as newer equipment one of the things i've been told some guys are doing to deal with these issues is there's pirated software out there from uh eastern europe the guys are utilizing to try to to get around this to to be able to work on their tractors themselves i believe the software i got to hack version of john deere's system when it comes to tractors i mean i farm so out of necessity they break down and i have to repair them in one way or another and it's a lot cheaper to do it myself than it is to haul it into a repair shop and our dealer to have it fixed we got lots of i mean everywhere on a combine there's a sensor here and a sensor there and every every single little part of it has a electrical sensor in it a couple of years ago we were doing a custom anhydrous fertilizer on corn fields and you have a real small window to be able to get this done in the year and the tractor broke down so i had to find the software to be able to repair my tractor and make my customer happy and make make a living there's a whole selection of the machines based on serial numbers and what they are and you got to pick the one out that's the right serial number for this machine and then you'll be able to come over here once you get able to get into this you know i can go in and i can do a diagnostic on it and it'll start checking all the codes and looking for what i have wrong and then i can go up here and i can look at them and see what the problem is and why it's popping up in 2015 the library of congress granted an exemption to the digital millennium copyright act that makes it legal for farmers to hack their tractors for the purposes of repair but software modification is still against john deere's terms of service which were updated soon after the ruling despite this right to repair is a growing movement that's turning ordinary farmers like guy mills into activists i wrote an op-ed in the paper after i researched a digital millennium copyright act i talked to some other people and other farmers after i wrote this opt-in they said hey we like what you said i said you know maybe we should do something about this so i made a resolution for our local nebraska corridors and i said let's let's put something in our in our uh bylaws there that we we support a right to repair and who could argue with that then lydia brosh and i i must commend her she'd come in there with lb67 i am six names down the fare repair act gives an individual the ability you've always had the right but the ability to purchase the diagnostic tools and to take it somewhere local or to try to repair the equipment yourself apple and microsoft showed up the hearing in lincoln why would apple care about whether a farmer from nebraska works on his tractor lb 67 got the attention of big tech companies because it affects the repair of all electronics including smartphones computers and of course tractors again the way the bill is drafted it says that any product that is sold and used in the state of nebraska if i'm the big guy what i do is i i just don't sell my products in the state of nebraska because they have to be sold here if it's online i don't sell to anybody who has a zip code in nebraska and if i'm a little manufacturer i move out of the state of nebraska you get lobbyists on occasion but never has anyone flown in to discourage me from introducing a bill and their points i believe were not valid i don't believe it's valid that this would open a mecca for hackers they stated their case they were doing their job and i believe i'm doing my job in protecting constituents and helping them you know to be able to grow economies in our local towns the bill passes i can go buy this cable instead of building my own and i would be able to just hook into the data port and be able to get all the information that i need right there i wouldn't have to improvise and build my own stuff to be able to see what's going on lb 67 or the fair repair act is still being held by the nebraska state legislature as of the beginning of 2018 12 states are considering similar bills john deere declined our request to visit nebraska dealerships but they gave us a statement regarding right to repair [Music] when i see the implement dealers and you do see them they're people on your main street you know you don't wish them any ill you know you you wish them success you want them to continue to serve the community and and i think they can do that as they access or give you access to the technology of the diagnostics it's just the diagnostics folks it's really interesting these older tractors are still capable of going out and doing a day's work and i wonder with all the technology we have in the in the newer tractors if the same will be true of them when they're that same age [Music] you

Channel: VICE

Views: 9,528,896

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, john deere, right to repair, right to repair louis rossmann, right to repair hearing, right to repair john deere, tractor hacking, big tech companies, john deere repair monopoly, nebraska, nebraska tractor test, john deere tractors, farmer hacks, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, louis rossmann

Id: EPYy_g8NzmI

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ignost]

John Deere's statement, lol:

Customers, dealers, and manufacturers should work together on the issue rather than invite government regulation that could add costs with no associated value.

Yeah, you should have worked with customers! You could have given people a stripped-down diagnostic kit. It doesn't even need to be the full software. Just tell people what's wrong with their equipment and let them activate parts. They'll happily agree you're not responsible if they do a bad repair job. Same goes for Apple and the other shitty companies that want to profit on repairs.

It's hilarious that they're talking about adding costs with no value. How, exactly, does letting people repair stuff cheaper add cost? How does it "add value" to have someone pay $2k to haul their truck to a repair shop to fix a broken little sensor? All it does is subtract from John Deere's bottom line. It's such a nonsense statement that it's obvious they're looking at it from their perspective and don't give a shit about the customer.

[u/ChinkyJew2RedNeck]

This is the main reason when I bought a new tractor last year, I didn't even consider buying a John Deere.

[u/john_jdm]

Video is from 2018. But the description says what matters:

As of 2020, no right to repair law has passed in the US.

I guess the special interests were strong in Nebraska. Fuck John Deere!

[u/spliffwizard]

Hactors

[u/humanman42]

Was this reuploaded? I swear I saw this video a year or so ago...

[u/Yodan]

Anything you buy should be yours, no ifs ands or buts. Anything you do after buying a product should not be at the whim of the company you bought it from. Nobody tells you you cannot juggle oranges after you buy them, you simply do or don't. I don't get why this is different for anything that uses electricity.

[u/finiac]

Not trying to be a dick, honest question. Why can’t these people buy other competitors tractors without these restrictions, or keep using the older ones if they can still do the job as they mention in the video?

[u/Solomon871]

Companies like John Deere, Apple, etc...need to be fined 10 billion or so each to teach them not to be fuckhead losers who try to rip us off.

[u/Nor-easter]

That guy who repairs apple products in NYC who posts about this makes good points too. I’ll have to find a link. If I’m the consumer am I really buying the product if I can’t fix it myself or did I just buy the rights to own it for a little while or did I just pay for access to it for a time.