Judge allows major 'right to repair' lawsuit against John Deere to move forward

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/08/judge-allows-major-right-to-repair-lawsuit-against-john-deere-to-move-forward/

by rntn • 3 years ago

311 78 3 years ago

chongli3• 3 years ago

This is good to see. It does not seem to involve any right to repair legislation though. Looks like it's purely an antitrust case where the claim is that John Deere is monopolizing the repair industry through consolidation.

lp0_on_fire• 3 years ago

John Deere is a 200 year old company and I am amazed at the goodwill they've burnt in a tenth of the time with these shenanigans.

LargeTomato• 3 years ago

I think it's a signal of changing market dynamics. Old John Deere just needed to sell the best tractors. They built a reputation and that was good enough.

Today's JD needs anti-repair policies, subscription pricing, and closed source code. It's easy to blame JD and maybe they do deserve blame but with so many companies pulled these shenanigans I think it's just a symptom of a wider economic pressures in the industry.

depressedpanda• 3 years ago

I would say it's more greed than pressure.

cptaj• 3 years ago

I see why you might think that but is there really data to back it up?

Making good products and respecting your customers is a great way to stay in business. I don't see why china selling tractors would change that. If anything, it would matter more than ever.

autoexec3• 3 years ago

I think it's a signal of changing market dynamics. Old John Deere just needed to sell the best tractors. They built a reputation and that was good enough.

So is the changing market dynamic is that John Deere now sells shitty tractors which means they have to depend on DRM and forcing people to get repairs through them in order to be profitable?

I suspect the reason so many companies resort to user-hostile anti-competitive practices is simply greed and a willingness to screw over anyone to make an extra buck at any cost. They want to have ever growing profits and growth which means they have to come up with more and more ways to take our money.

jjkeddo199• 3 years ago

Reform idea:

Capital gains tax should be split into two categories: Medium term (1+ year) and very long term (7+ years). Very long term tax would be much lower than today's tax, while medium term would be higher. This reform would reduce MBA's plundering company goodwill and trust for short-term quarterly boosts and reward long-term thinking.

joe_the_user• 3 years ago

Today's JD needs anti-repair policies, subscription pricing, and closed source code

Is JD being evil or are they just bowing to competitive pressure? At a certain point the question becomes hard to answer. When certain behaviors we'd consider awful have been normalized throughout a sector of society (management in this case), there's always an argument about whether someone can be blamed for "just following orders" or "just implementing standard procedures" etc.

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

The proof that it is not wider economic pressures is their profit margin trend:

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DE/deere/profit-ma...

Due to advances in software, they saw an opportunity to increase their profit margins.

The question is, are there insufficient businesses that can sell what Deere sells without the restricting software at a lower price? Based on Deere’s success in increasing its profit margins, it seems like the answer is no.

So then the question is why are there insufficient businesses? Is selling what Deere sells so high barrier to entry that a new seller will not try? Is it possible to lower those barriers to entry?

marcyb5st• 3 years ago

I'm my personal opinion stuff like this are increasingly happening since MBAs started running every kind of companies, not only financial ones.

It seems to me that they push for some short term profit to get bonuses and promotions and then move to do the same things elsewhere.

However, it could also be a personal selection or survivor bias in my memory (I remember stuff like that more). Nevertheless, it really feels that very few companies optimize for the long run by prioritizing user satisfaction or similar metrics.

brucethemoose2• 3 years ago

Outside incentives line up with that too. Most investors seem to want quick gains, not steady growth.

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

It's almost purely because of the connectedness and software-eats-the-world society we have today. Before it wasn't practical or even possible to withhold total ownership from consumers, but as soon as it was, corps jumped on it.

dontlaugh• 3 years ago

It’s at least partly due to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time.

To maintain or increase profits, it becomes necessary to exploit workers more to reduce costs and to prevent competition to increase prices.

bozhark• 3 years ago

‘Bout time

skeptrune• 3 years ago

I understand that they're trying to preserve their service network, but that's not a valid reason to prevent people from repairing their purchased machines.

Happy to see this going through.

londons_explore2• 3 years ago

If you request summary dismissal of a lawsuit you end up losing, you should be required to pay double-damages.

This whole idea of each party delaying the case requesting summary dismissal just to drive costs up for the other side is stupid.

pdq• 3 years ago

"Loser pays" is a better and simpler legal system.

ghaff2• 3 years ago

Which means that people without much money can't risk suing a company with deep pockets.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

What you want is fee-shifting. Doesn't need to be tied to the presence of a motion to dismiss. Unfortunately this is so un-American a concept we literally call it the French Rule (or the English Rule)[0].

The purpose of a motion to dismiss is to make getting rid of bullshit lawsuits easier. That is, if someone sues you for something that, say, isn't actually illegal, you get to throw out the lawsuit without having to go through discovery and a trial. This is important because rich people who can afford lawyers will absolutely sue[1] you as a censorship tactic, and being able to dismiss the suit quickly is the difference between a $10k legal bill and a $100k legal bill. In fact, anti-SLAPP bills work by giving you a fancy motion to dismiss that also triggers fee-shifting - which is enough for the rich person's lawyers to dissuade them from a censorious lawsuit.

So I don't think we should make motions to dismiss more perilous to file. They're the last speck of respectability in our awful legal system. We should instead make wasting the other party's time cost money.

[0] Except in copyright where you can get fee-shifting under specific conditions.

[1] Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP

DaiPlusPlus• 3 years ago

We should instead make wasting the other party's time cost money.

How do you prove that, though?

OkayPhysicist• 3 years ago

I'm of the opposite mind: motions for summary dismissal should be made as approachable as possible, ideally to the point that an individual with some basic internet-access level research can file one easily. That cuts down dramatically on the "we have enough resources to bleed you dry" style lawsuit, if you can simply say "Gigacorp is suing me for violation of their non-compete clause. Non-compete clauses are unenforceable in this state. Please go away" before even needing to get a lawyer involved.

Nextgrid• 3 years ago

if you can simply say "Gigacorp is suing me for violation of their non-compete clause. Non-compete clauses are unenforceable in this state. Please go away"

I wonder, what prevents one from doing this now, and getting a lawyer only if that proves unsuccessful?

Trisell• 3 years ago

Right to repair is such an issue in the farming space right now, Big Bud re-entered the markets with a fully repairable tractor. Rumors are that pre-orders are significant.

https://agupdate.com/farmandranchguide/news/state-and-region...

guerby• 3 years ago

Site rejects EU because RGPD, alt URL: https://archive.is/e77LB

silexia• 3 years ago

We MUST get right to repair as not having it deeply widens the inequality gap. I am a conservative Republican, and this legal change will do a lot to resolve legitimate grievances the left has been pushing on.

Judge allows major 'right to repair' lawsuit against John Deere to move forward

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