John Deere’s Vehicles Farm Everything But Common Sense

Oh Deere, what the hell? It seems that the world’s largest maker of agricultural equipment believes that because software drives its machines, it’s the owner. You might have paid for it, but you better believe it: to John Deere, it’s simply “implied” that you have a “license” to use it for its lifetime.

Years ago, we could purchase a vehicle and not fuss over whether or not it’d be easy to repair down the road – especially self-repair. Today’s vehicles, though, are equipped with so much software under the hood, that myriad of things could happen that could prevent its rightful owner from being able to fix it. This is an issue that John Deere doesn’t seem to care too much about.

Where this kind of customer disservice is involved, I am always reminded of the tales 2600’s Emmanuel Goldstein has told regarding his Smart car. Due to the strong attraction he had to the automaker’s first cars, Emmanuel made the trek up to Canada to purchase one a few years before they became available in the US. Well, would you believe that despite there being many authorized dealers in the US later on, he still had to bring his car up to Canada each time it needed maintenance or repair? That’s the fun of software.

That’s the kind of reality that vehicle software can raise, and if you think that your automaker will care much about your repair troubles years after the vehicle’s release, you’re likely in for a rough surprise.

Apparently, that extends to farmers – the hard-working folk that make sure we have access to great produce, wheat, and MMO currency. Even today, some farmers are regretting their purchase of newer tractors, simply because older ones don’t bring with them so many under-the-hood digital roadblocks.

John Deere driver clearly pirating Codemaster’s DiRT 3

As far as John Deere’s lawyers (and others, it must be said) are concerned, the biggest issue here is that people have to copy software out of a vehicle in order to “fix” or modify it. Remember back in the day when you could swap out an exhaust pipe or replace the in-dash stereo and the vendor wouldn’t care as long as long as you’re driving a vehicle it had made? Apparently John Deere doesn’t share that mindset.

Here’s a rather mind-blowing argument by John Deere’s lawyers, as relayed by Wired: “The pièce de résistance in John Deere’s argument: permitting owners to root around in a tractor’s programming might lead to pirating music through a vehicle’s entertainment system.”

What in the…? What’s next? Cuisinart arguing that people will pirate Bread’s 1972 hit album Baby I’m-a Want You with its toasters, or Kitchenaid worried that its ovens will allow the download of Hot Hot Heat’s entire discography?

This situation may not be completely unfamiliar too. One need only look so far as mobile phone unlocking, and the constant battle with DCMA to see the kind of legal horrors this has brought up. At what point does a device and its software become a single entity, creating hardware as a service? Who owns what in single purchase? Printers with third-party ink suppliers, coffee machines that use tagged pods; While I would say this is one for the lawyers to sort out, in all honesty, are they not the cause of this issue? Think it’s time we chalked up another item to the great list that is first-world problems.

If John Deere’s lawyers want to be taken seriously, it might be best that they drop the ridiculous scenarios they’re making up.

I am not sure what else can be said. Just check out the article and prepare to cringe.

Jamie Fletcher contributed to this post.