Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes earlier this month joined a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission and four other states against John Deere. The suit says the farm equipment manufacturer is “monopolizing key segments of the agricultural equipment market and engaging in unfair methods of competition.” Among other accusations, the lawsuit says John Deere isn’t providing users what they need to fix their equipment on their own, or at a repair shop of their choice.
This is part of a nationwide movement known as “right to repair.” Lawmakers have introduced bills on this in most states across the country; some have been signed into law, although not in Arizona.
Kyle Wiens, founder and CEO of iFixit, which he describes as a free repair guide for everything, joined The Show to discuss what Wiens makes of this lawsuit and how it fits into the right to repair movement.
We also reached out to John Deere for comment on the original lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and some states, including Arizona.
It says, in part “this lawsuit, filed on the eve of a change in Administration, ignores the Company’s long-standing commitment to customer self-repair and the consistent progress and innovation we have made over time.”
“The complaint is based on flagrant misrepresentations of the facts and fatally flawed legal theories, and it punishes innovation and procompetitive product design.”
Full conversation
KYLE WIENS: Well, the problem is that John Deere has identified some business opportunities that end up screwing over farmers and at the end of the day are illegal. So what John Deere has been doing is increasingly locking farmers out of repairing their equipment. So when my grandfather was a farmer, he could do anything on the equipment himself. If he needed to replace a belt that he could do that, change the oil, he could do that. Now these things have fancy touch screens and there are many repairs where you have to have a special laptop, and John Deere will not make that tool available to farmers. So there are many repairs that farmers just can't do themselves. And what the federal government is saying is that the way that John Deere is locking farmers out is in fact illegal.
MARK BRODIE: And to be clear, this is not just a John Deere issue, right? Like this is all sorts of equipment, devices, technology, right?
WIENS: This is a problem that we have seen many manufacturers use across lots of industries. What's happening is as electronics move into more and more products, we have computers and everything now. Companies are using that as an opportunity to monopolize service to lock people out, because there's a lot of profit that you can make in rolling trucks out to farmers' fields and charging by the hour for service. And if you can use software to create a monopoly for yourself, you will. So we've seen this problem with game consoles, we've seen it with cellphones, and we're seeing it with farm equipment.
BRODIE: What are some of the kinds of products that people who maybe are not farmers would have run into this issue with?
WIENS: It's, it's kind of surprising the number of just everyday things you run into. We found an issue with a chainsaw where there was a part that you couldn't repair without software fixed for the chainsaw. This has been the case for smartphones for a long time. Yeah, Apple was, was locking down repairs where you might install a new part, but, you couldn't make that part work unless you had blessing from their repair software, which means, which means them, right, because they won't give that software to you. Now, over the last couple of years as right to repair laws have passed around the country, we are seeing some manufacturers like Apple walk some of that back and open repairs a little bit more.
BRODIE: We should also point out that this does not necessarily mean that you, the owner of an iPhone or a tractor or a chainsaw, necessarily wants to physically do the repair yourself, right? Like this also includes you being able to pick a service person or a repair shop of your choice to do it for you, right?
WIENS: That's right. This is about choice. What are your options? If you think about your car, if your car breaks, what are your options? You can take it to the dealership, you can take it to a local mechanic, or you can fix it yourself, and all of those are good options. There's only a few people that fix cars themselves, right? Most of us would take it to a mechanic, but do you want to pay more at the dealership, or do you want to hire your local mechanic who goes to church with you? Those are kind of our options.
BRODIE: And how much of this comes down to the fact that as you referenced, so many devices, even, you know, machines that you wouldn't think would have a computer in them, do have computers in them, which adds sort of another layer of what you have to do to fix it.
WIENS: Yeah, that really is the trend that we see is as products, you know, they're getting more complex. You have chips added to them, which means there's software added to them. And then you have a new wave of tools. So you think about like to work on things traditionally, maybe you've got wrenches and screwdrivers. Well, to work on things in the modern day, you also need software, diagnostic software, say.
And you've seen this, a car mechanic has a software tool or a tablet that they plug in your car and they can read. They say, oh, error code P123, that means you have a problem with your transmission. We're used to these kind of errors. Imagine everything out there has those challenges, and, and then, the manufacturers will either refuse to sell that software, so only their dealership can have it, or they'll sell it for such exorbitant prices that that really locks people out.
I'll give you an example, General Electric, if you have a GE appliance, a refrigerator or a stove or something like that, it's got computers in it and their diagnostic codes that it's putting out just like your car is. The software for that is something like $600 a year. So, let's say you wanted to fix your, your refrigerator yourself. Are you gonna turn around and pay $600 for software to fix your refrigerator once? Like, no one is ever gonna do that. So they've immediately shut out the DIY-ers, and then they're also making it expensive for the independent technicians, cause you might say, well, $600 once is no big deal, but imagine that you're not just fixing General Electric appliances, you're also fixing Kenmore and Maytag, and all the other brands, and it adds up to an amount that is kind of ludicrous. So one of the ideas behind repair is to say, hey, if you have a software tool that doesn't cost you any money to distribute, you got to make that available to everybody for free.
BRODIE: Are there instances where maybe it would cost a manufacturer money or maybe there are sort of competitive concerns they don't want, you know, company secrets to get out that would, you know, give them a legitimate in your mind, excuse to not make that software available?
WIENS: If there's a physical product that you have to distribute, if there's, if there's a tool, if there's a cable, if there's a printed manual, of course you should be able to charge for that, and that's reasonable. But if it's just, if it's just bits across the wire, imagine if HP was to start charging for driver updates. And so if you wanted to install your printer on another computer, you have to pay for that software. That would be crazy, right? Of course, we can get access to the tools that we need to make our stuff work for free. That's just normal, and, and that's what it should be across the board with these products.
BRODIE: I'm curious about the issue of maybe liability and sort of reputation for the company that makes the product. Like if I have a, for example, to go back to your example, if I have a GE refrigerator and I'm able to get access to the software to fix it and I fix it poorly, is GE liable for the fact that its refrigerator might not work anymore? Or is there a way for them to, you know, make up for the fact that I'm gonna think maybe their refrigerator is not a good piece of equipment to have?
WIENS: Yeah, that's a good question. I would say this framing is often coming directly from, from the manufacturers. So, think about your experience with your car. If you take it to a local mechanic and they screw it up, you're gonna leave the mechanic a one-star review. You're not gonna leave the dealership who sold you the car a bad review.
And our local repair technicians live and thrive off of their reputation, right? A local business of any sort that provides bad service or doesn't stand behind their work doesn't last very long. So I'm, I really don't think there's a reputational risk to manufacturers. The reputational risk is to people that do a good job or don't do a good job. That's up to them.
BRODIE: What have you seen in some of the states that have passed right to repair legislation? Like, are there more repair shops opening up and getting more business, or there may be more people trying to, you know, fix their equipment themselves?
WIENS: We are right at the beginning where there's half a dozen states that have passed right to repair laws. Only a few of those have gone into effect so far. We are starting to see an impact though. I got an email the other day. Colorado passed a wheelchair right to repair law that says, hey, if you have an electric wheelchair, the software is for working on that should be made available to the wheelchair owners. And someone emailed me and said, oh, thank God, I was finally able to get the software that I need to repair my wheelchair. They're really excited about that.
And we're starting to see more information being made available. For the first time, Apple and Samsung and others are starting to sell repair parts. You know, back in the day, you couldn't get a battery from the manufacturer for your smartphone. So we're seeing many manufacturers roll that out. So we're starting to see some changes.
