Guest Post by Eric Peters
How long before they bring back prima nocta?
It’s a serious question.
Other aspects of feudalism have been part of everyday life for so long now we hardly notice them – and even consider it normal – just as the peasants of 500 years ago probably did. For instance, just like the kings of 500 years ago, Uncle claims ownership of all land under his jurisdiction; we are merely tenants who are suffered to rent the land for as long as we continue to pay the annual tributum.
We are allowed to use the land as the sovereign sees fit – and not otherwise. If we use it in ways forbidden, the king – whoops, Uncle – will punish us. He can also just take it from us via another noxious doctrine – that of eminent domain.
But until recently, we at least owned our incidentals – the small-potatoes stuff, like the clothes on our backs. Our cars.
Our tractors, certainly.
Not anymore.
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Not if it’s a John Deere tractor.
When you buy one, you’re actually purchasing an “implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.“ Basically, a rental contract. With the difference being that even when the rental is paid off, you are still bound by the contract.
Yes, really.
It has to do with two things – the code that runs the tractor (yes, them too) and the ownership claims to that code asserted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
You may recall the ruckus that erupted abut a year ago when the car companies floated the idea that even though you bought their car, it was still their code that ran the thing – and this code remained proprietary. That is, their property. To “tamper” with anything that could conceivably affect the code, their lawyers proposed, would violate both the warranty and copyright laws. Effectively making the car not your property, no matter the name on the title.
A DMCA exception was granted for cars – but probably only because of the rictus of outrage that erupted; rightly so.
Tractors, on the other hand. . .
Probably because there are fewer farmers – and most of them are wholly owned subsidiaries of massive agricultural Big Ag cartels, working the fields on behalf of Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, et al.
When you buy a Deere, you must since a licensing agreement (see here) that contains what amounts to the rental agreement. It basically says that you – the “owner” – will not perform unauthorized repairs or modifications; that you will only permit an authorized Deere technician to touch “your” tractor. This comes in mighty handy when you are out in the field cutting hay and something breaks and you need to get the thing running again right now . . . not next Thursday, when the Deere dude can schedule you an authorized appointment.
Naturally, this is all about the money. That – and the control.
The money part is objectionable – but at least it is just the normal human lust for gain.
The car companies have been trying for years to force you to spend money at the dealership by making cars so complicated that almost no one without a mechanical and electrical engineering degree and some very righteous tools can successfully perform anything more involved than an oil change – and they are working on that.
The next step was to not use open source code to run the computer (ECU) that runs the car and then restrict access to this “proprietary” code by making it readable only by one of their diagnostic machines. Without the ability to read the code, figuring out what ails a computer-controlled car is almost impossible. Independent shops now often have to spend huge sums to buy the authorized diagnostic equipment and that cost often exceeds what they can make performing repairs. Hence it’s not worth buying the machine. Hence, they cannot repair that particular brand of car.
Off to the dealership you go.
The third step was to use legal threats and mumbo-jumbo – the DMCA – to make it illegal to even try to repair the car yourself, unauthorized.
Touch the car and you void the warranty. And if that’s not enough to dissuade you, then maybe they’ll sic the cops on you or “copyright” violation.
It’s what they had in mind, certainly. And Deere – and makers of other non-DCMA-exempted things with computers and code – which is becoming just about everything, down to toothbrushes, too – surely intends the same.
The better to mulct you with, my pretty.
But the control part is the most loathsome. It is part of the synergistic bum’s rush – you can almost feel the walls closing in – toward a neo-feudal, company town kind of life in which you never own anything, control almost nothing and spend your days toeing the line and doing as you are told.
Even if you avoid debt, you still must constantly pay eternal rent to remain on “your” land, in “your” home. If you have kids, you will be instructed how they’ll be raised; your job is to serve as kind of wet nurse/chauffeur. Your car will soon drive itself – according to programming imparted by others – your owners. And forget about having a peek under the hood. An alarm will probably be triggered, an environmental or saaaaaaaaaaafety SWAT team summoned.
Short of Going Amish, I see no way out.
Go Galt. Fuck ’em all!
I first thought that DMCA was the Defense Management Contract Agency but no…it something else almost as bad…….
This is another window in to desperation. The end is near. All of these type of machinations come about because a company can not actually sell a normal product and make any profit, so they have to resort to force squeeze more revenue. This a symptom of the bigger problem in this debt Ponzi scheme. It is taking far more work (and force) to squeeze the same amount of ‘profit’ out of everything. The pleab’s can barely afford the minimum payments on college, healthcare etc. so they make it mandatory to have health insurance. The HR drone army makes it impossible to get past them as gatekeepers for the simplest job because they ‘require’ a degree. Forced debt just to get the most basic job. Of course, all of the regulations force employers to have HR departments as gatekeepers to keep them from going afoul of the government drones and getting sued by the scumbag lawyers. More squeezing.
Now Deere can’t make money just selling the tractors anymore (just look at their balance sheet for the past 7 years if you think the opposite is true), and any farmers still solvent and profitable probably don’t need the ‘authorized’ dealer to fix things, so now they have to squeeze the farmers by telling them they are breaking the law to simply repair their property. Gotta have that continuing revenue somehow. No more money for loans to buy the tractor, as farming is no longer lucrative, thanks big AG and government.
All of these and more are sure signs of desperation. Feds ZIRP, that was the beginning of the end. When companies can’t make money, on free money, it is only a matter of time.
Anon.
This is the anon I know and love.
I believe Rolls Royce cars have been sold under the same terms for a long time. They want to prevent riff raff from driving their cars, is my understanding.
Anon, I agree fully. I saw the beginnings with Apple. When they started banned all non approved charging equipment from working on your Iphones etc. you must buy the cheap ready to break any moment chargers from Apple only, once large companies resort to this it is the 2nd to last stop before they are “nationalized” or laws enacted forcing the public to buy/rent…..wait we do have that already, forced citizen purchase of healthcare….this was the trial part of that plan. Next will be food. The most important things are health and food, everything else is a commodity. Your homes and land, even iF owned are “rented” to you as you must pay taxes annually. Eminent Domain takes out the rest that won’t comply. Your food will be banned if it’s organic, healthy etc….you must only purchase big corporate poisoned filled crap loaded with chemicals and antibiotics. They will put outta biz the small grocers (if not already done) and family farms (happening at a fast pace now) and co-ops (are under EPA/IRS attack now) victory gardens are illegal (homeowners covenants and NDAA, it is fully illegal for capture rainwater, make your own pond etc). They protect Monsanto until they can kill all the bees so pollination cannot happen naturally and then bees, being endangered will be illegal to own. Only corporations can have them and produce food….call me crazy but JP Morgan became the worlds first billionaire using the exact same tactics. Once these forced purchases are thought of as normal it is truly over and the time to go FULL Galt and watch it all crumble. Figure I got 20 years and working on going full Galt by then. Happen sooner if wife would wake up just a little more, faster.
Why do you use or support Apple products ?
THINK about it.
(written 5 stoplights away from the new ‘spaceship’ campus.
Fuck Apple.
Don’t let the mule die on your shift. A true slogan from the Slaves who were blessed with the priviledge of working the coal mines owned by those nice Rockefeller folks. If you let the mule die you had to pay for a new one. If you died your widow had to produce 2 sons to replace you or get out of the company house in 1 week.
ZBones you ain’t crazy but I don’t think We have 20 years and I could never speed my wife up. She was fully wed to the system. She died before I could figure out a way to off her and not get caught.
Just fucking stop ok
As you might know this shit has already been hashed out on the interwebs. This is such old news. The author knows not what he speaks about.
Omfg. So much bullshit
You can buy the oem tool for John Deere for less
Than 3k. Let me say this again. For less than 3k or about 7-% of the cost of that tractor they will send you the fucking oem tool to program the unit. To much?
Fuck off.
The program files are available FREE if you have the tool and the oem liscence agreement that john deere gives you when they purchase the vehicle. If you are a repair facility you can purchase the programs for a sliding scale for one vin or multiple vins.
Something that really pisses me off is bad information. People who do not know shot post stuff that is supposed to mean shit.
Lies and bullshit. Pure bullshit. Someone call me out please. I will post the site where you can buy the tool and the programing access.
Fuck.
Jimski.
He could have picked a better example perhaps but I don’t think it was about the Deere Co. as much as where it’s all going.
I think by law companies have to provide the system info/tool. They did try not to allow folks to have them, for reasons already mentioned, but the outcry was too severe.
Hey Jimski, this may be the reason we need to see your stash of articles. If you are afraid we might be too critical about the syntax errors and whatnot, just illustrate them with bikini models and it’ll fly like ET on a bike gone for ice cream and there was none.
lol 3K is an outrage. That is 3K that shouldnt need to be spent at all. It is a frickin tractor, not the space shuttle. It shouldnt have any parts more complicated than could fit into a 100 page manual.
I’ll call you out for missing the point, which you clearly did. The point is them attempting to make it either illegal or prohibitively expensive to workon your vehicles yourself, forcing you to pay them to do it.
That is the consumer version of JD Service Advisor. It is $3k plus $195 a month. It does not allow you to update the software. It is a lite version. You still need a dealer to update the ecu and authorize replacement parts. So you can pay for it and the new parts and install them but you still need the dealer to restart the damn thing. I love when misinformed schmucks think they know it all. You are a complete asshat.
Funny I called out a charlatan. And the charlatan crawled back in his hole. I understand the current litigation climate. I understand the manufacturer concerns. But Deere is alienating their clients who have very different needs then the average consumer. It all comes down to excessive regulation. FREEBSD. Proprietary software is pure fucking evil. The fucking devil Himself. Gee thanks for the basic income talk from a monopolist. Gee, Fucking whiz. Wit.
Not my tractor brand.
Deere was far too damn expensive in the first place.
John Deer turned me down for credit; I told the guy FU because I could pay cash if I wanted; went straight to Kubota and had my tractor in one hour at 0% interest; 15 years later and not one problem with the tractor.
The small print in the contract, corporate America is its own worst enemy. Big brother corporate farming, the green machinery you see is nothing but a facade of the federal government. If we are not concerned, we should be, slavery to the government is a contract that will never be voided!
John Deere is the ONLY tractor company in the US to have retained its name from its founding to the present day, never merging with another brand. The ONLY. I own a JD tractor and one of their zero turn lawn mowers, neither of which has given me any maintenance issues ever. People rail about the “cost of that green paint” but it covers a high quality machine, in my estimation.
Most of us, if we are concerned, can buy and upfit an older vehicle to avoid the potential of the operating system being overridden by the manufacturer at the behest of a tyrannical state. Pretty much the same for tractors – most of us will never be big enough to worry about one of ‘those’ tractors. They are the big, GPS-enabled, autonomous behemoths that are already on corporate farms. The rest of us can farm our little acreage with the 50s era & up tractors that are widely available and easily rebuilt and maintained.
The larger issue of perpetual licensing rights by OEMs is big, however, and promises to get bigger and more frequent as lines of code determine our every move.
It’s not the code or the ECU that is the issue, this is just a temporary diversion.
imagine a future, where every sensor on the car/tractor/etc, will communicate to the ECU with a good encryption.
Right now, the Ruskies have figured out how to EMP our flotilla of hard wired battleships, and most are now in the refit process to swap out wires with fiber optic cables (immune to the current ruskie electronic warfare).
imagine a thermostat or a spark plug, or a O2 sensor, that will only work with the right encrypted signal. only available as an OEM part, $$$.
this is the future.
Mike and RHS…I had a New Holland tractor for several years…great tractor. Kubota is a workhorse for sure.
Monsanto has held farmers captive to Roundup ready seeds. A farmer in the past could save seeds to plant the next years crops. Do that with Roundup ready seeds and they’ll fine the crap out of you .
We’re all serfs to the political machine. Nothing has changed in the last 400 years or more other than perhaps life is no longer “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short ” ( for folks in the Western World ).
Supposedly if their plants pollinate your fields and it’s discovered you are growing a Monsanto copyrighted plant they will sue you and win too.
It is truly bizarro world, you buy seeds that grow plants, and if you keep seeds from the plants that you grew from seeds you planted to plant more next year, you are breaking the law….but I think a lot of the GMO plants are made to not produce viable seeds, so that’s not even an option, you have to buy more.
What. The. Fuck.
The world is a vampire…