404 Media

2026-07-09 14:09:23

Farmers Finally Get a John Deere Right to Repair Agreement That Doesn’t Screw Them Over

Wednesday, John Deere agreed to give farmers broader access to repair their tractors and farm equipment under an antitrust settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, one of the biggest wins in the long right to repair battle. The settlement is the latest and by far the most important development in several recent lawsuits against John Deere, and is finally an agreement that isn’t full of half measures and doesn’t have massive, obvious loopholes.

The FTC settlement is far better than a recent, highly controversial settlement in a separate class action lawsuit against Deere brought by farmers in Illinois, and it’s worth breaking down the differences. Two years ago, I wrote an article called “The Walls Are Closing in on John Deere’s Tractor Repair Monopoly,” which followed that Illinois case, in which several farmers brought a complex, class action antitrust lawsuit against Deere. The judge in that case, Iain Johnson, wrote several scathing opinions about Deere’s anti-repair practices that indicated that he was seemingly inclined to hit Deere with stiff penalties.

But after years of litigation, the plaintiffs in that case decided to settle with Deere in April, earning a $99 million payout for farmers who paid for repairs over the last decade, and several right-to-repair protections that did not have much in the way of legal teeth.

This $99 million payout was roughly $79 million after legal fees and to be divided among more than 200,000 farmers; this means each farmer will receive roughly $395, or “less than the cost of a single authorized dealer service call for a typical 500-acre farm,” according to an analysis by Willie Cade, a longtime farm right to repair advocate.

“Bottom line is that farmers are getting $0.79 per acre for the eight years of Deere abuse,” Cade told me. “Bad settlement. The settlement is insufficient … the money is a small fraction of what the class could recover at trial, the claims process depends on labor-hour data only Deere holds, and the repair "fixes" are riddled with loopholes that leave Deere's monopoly intact.”

Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor
“There is consumer pressure to back away from technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks.”
404 MediaJason Koebler

The Illinois settlement would prohibit farmers covered by it from filing any future repair-related litigation against Deere, and only required Deere to provide parts and repair guides to farmers under poorly defined “fair and reasonable” terms, a loophole that other manufacturers have used to claim that their parts and tools are constantly out of stock or cost astronomic prices.

“The ‘fair and reasonable terms’ standard is not price equality with dealers, nor is it a guaranteed price ceiling,” Cade wrote in his analysis. “Disputes about whether Deere’s pricing meets this standard are subject to Court oversight, but individual farmers may have limited practical ability to challenge pricing that does not obviously cross the line.”

The settlement in the Illinois case was so bad that one of the plaintiffs in the case, Wilson Farms, filed a 53 page formal objection to it two weeks ago, in part because it claims that there are many “unlitigated and uncompensated” cases in which farmers suffered under Deere’s monopoly. Under the settlement, farmers would no longer be able to sue Deere by “terminat[ing] Class members’ ability to collectively challenge Deere’s repair aftermarket monopolization for a generation.”

“Rather than provide any meaningful benefit to the Class, it appears that the proposed Settlement’s most important effect will be to give Deere its most powerful tool yet in its decades-long effort to block farmers from repairing their own equipment,” the objection says. “Extinguishment of farmers’ rights under the law.”

Other farmers called the Illinois settlement “disingenuous” and “unfair.”

The good news is that the wildly disappointing and seemingly unnecessary selling out of farmers’ rights in the Illinois case that Deere appeared to be losing very badly is greatly mitigated by the FTC’s settlement from this week. The FTC case was brought by Lina Khan under the Biden administration; to its credit, the Trump administration decided to continue litigating.
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The FTC settlement does not have monetary damages for farmers, but it has far better right to repair protections for John Deere customers moving forward. In the FTC deal, the “fair and reasonable terms” are better defined and are based on the price that John Deere dealers actually pay for repair parts and tools. Deere and its dealers are not allowed to “discriminate or retaliate” against farmers who repair their own equipment (manufacturers have been known to brick devices that consumers fix themselves). The FTC settlement also includes access to farmers for “future repair resources,” meaning repair tools, guides, software, and parts that Deere creates in the future.

Deere must also file “compliance reports” with the FTC, and the FTC will have oversight of the compliance. Crucially, the FTC settlement also does not affect farmers’ private grievances against Deere, meaning it is possible for farmers to sue Deere if the company’s repair practices have affected them.

The FTC settlement is one that has actual legal teeth and enforcement mechanisms that Deere should at least theoretically have to comply with. Earlier agreements and right to repair “wins” for farmers were often half measures (though it’s worth mentioning that Colorado passed a good agriculture right to repair law in 2023 after years of struggle from farmers and advocates). Deere and various farmers’ public interest groups had previously agreed to right to repair “memorandums of understanding” in which Deere promised to make repair parts and tools available to farmers. In practice, however, these tools and parts were often not available, were not as good as what dealers and authorized service providers had access to, or were unreasonably expensive. These memorandums of understanding also had few or no enforcement mechanisms.

Cade told 404 Media in an email that this settlement order “gives farmers real hope.”

Nathan Proctor, senior right to repair campaign director for consumer rights group U.S. PIRG, said in a statement that the FTC settlement “is much better than the deal secured in [the Illinois] class action lawsuit.”

“Deere has now agreed to make available all materials needed to conduct repairs, including some which it has previously withheld,” Proctor said. “I want to thank the FTC for its work on this case. Our goal from the start of our campaign was to ensure that farmers and independent mechanics get everything they need to fix equipment. We will continue to monitor the situation and advocate to ensure that goal is a reality.”

In other words, farmers finally have an actual, major win in the right to repair fight that goes far beyond earlier piecemeal and moral victories.

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Faced with new laws in California and other states, big tech lobbyists want to sign a "Memorandum of Understanding" to prevent "a compliance market where lawyers drive the decisions."

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-06-03 18:07:10

Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor

The secondary market for decades old, low-tech John Deere tractors has been booming for years as farmers have sought reliable tractors that they can actually fix without having to deal with John Deere’s repair monopoly. A Canadian company has seen that demand and came up with a radical thought: What if they made a new, repairable, “no-tech” tractor to solve what has become a gigantic pain point for farmers?

Alberta’s Ursa Ag says that it has been inundated with demand after announcing its tractor, which costs roughly half as much as a Deere and has the benefit of not being a repair nightmare. We have for years covered the frustration that farmers have felt as they have been locked out of their Deere tractors with digital rights management systems that prevent them from fixing their machinery, tractors that won’t run because of minor sensor failures, and crops that literally die on the vine as they wait for an “authorized” repair person to fix tractors during critical harvesting periods.
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Ursa Ag markets its tractors as “no frills” and “built to last.” Ursa Ag’s Doug Wilson told me that the company designed the tractor because of a need in the marketplace for a new machine that isn’t loaded with tech and is easy to maintain. The company follows in the footsteps of consumer electronics companies like Fairphone, which makes a repairable smartphone and Framework, which makes modular, repairable laptops. The demand Ursa Ag has seen is part of the backlash to manufacturer repair monopolies and the injection of technology and internet-connected sensors and terms of use into even the most basic of gadgets.

“I talk to farmers every day and I hear from farmers every day about how they went out and bought machinery from 1987 so that it wouldn’t have a computer on it,” Wilson said. “All of this came from a simple discussion with a customer who wanted to be able to turn [the tractor] on at the start of the day, to use it, and shut it off at the end of the day. It needed to work, so that’s what we built.”

Ursa Ag’s tractor has been hyped in agriculture circles after Wilson showed the tractor off at a Canadian farm show and it was featured by Farms.com. Wilson said more than a thousand farmers have contacted him after that show, from roughly 30 countries. “I got a handwritten letter from a farmer in France who doesn’t own a computer and wanted us to mail him information about the tractors,” he said.

He said the company has thus far made a couple fewer than 100 tractors but is working on tripling its production capacity and has seen a lot of demand over the last few months. For years, people who don’t understand the repair monopoly issue—that John Deere controls the parts production and distribution for its tractors, the software that runs its tractors, the diagnostics for its tractors, and the repair guides for its tractors—have said that farmers should simply vote with their wallets and buy tractors from a different company. The problem has been that, until now, there hasn’t really been an alternative company that doesn’t have similar repair practices. Ursa Ag is filling that niche. Perhaps other companies will pop up to sell low- or no-tech, repairable appliances and gadgets.

“Given the number of my customers that carry flip phones, I would say there is consumer pressure to back away from some of the technology that is unnecessary to perform everyday tasks,” Wilson said. “So that is definitely transferable to dishwashers and washing machines, refrigerators. Refrigerators that have screens on them that'll tell you what's inside. It's a little crazy.”

“That high-tech stuff, the million-dollar John Deere tractor has a place. It has technology that is well worth the money,” Wilson said. “But that technology is needed for 5 percent of what a farm does. There are so many applications for tractors on farms that don’t require technology. The technology that goes into even a calculator is not required for most farming applications.”

The Walls Are Closing in on John Deere’s Tractor Repair Monopoly

Inside the class action lawsuit bringing federal scrutiny to John Deere's repair practices.

^{Jason Koebler (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-04-07 13:56:41

Data Center Tech Lobbyists Fearmonger in Attempt to Retroactively Roll Back Right to Repair Law

Lobbyists for major tech firms like Cisco and IBM are trying to push through legislation in Colorado that would drastically roll back a groundbreaking right to repair law under the guise of protecting national security and data centers.

The legislation, which passed through a Colorado state senate committee on Thursday, would exempt hardware from the existing right to repair law if that hardware “is considered critical infrastructure.” One of the issues with this is that “critical infrastructure” is very broadly defined, and could include essentially anything. In practice, the law could essentially repeal huge parts of one of the most important right to repair laws in the United States.

“It relies on a broad, vague definition that allows the manufacturer themselves to self-designate whether their equipment is for critical infrastructure,” Louis Rossmann, a right to repair expert and popular YouTuber, testified at a hearing on the bill Thursday. “So if a laptop manufacturer knows the Pentagon buys their laptops, they can declare that line exempt. If a networking company sells a $20 switch to a federal building, they can claim that hardware is critical infrastructure. It’s a blank check for manufacturers to exempt themselves.”

Ever since consumer rights advocates began pushing for right to repair legislation roughly a decade ago, hardware manufacturers have been fear mongering to lawmakers by telling them that right to repair would introduce security threats by requiring them to reveal proprietary information about their products. In practice, the exact opposite has happened, because greater access to repair parts, tools, diagnostic software, and repair guides means that broken equipment that could potentially be more vulnerable to hacking attempts can be fixed more quickly.

“When we talk about critical infrastructure and fixing things, we often do not have time to wait for an official fix from a company that may not be motivated to fix things,” Andrew Brandt, a security researcher and cofounder of the nonprofit Elect More Hackers, testified Thursday. “What ends up happening is that with smaller companies, where they may have spent most of their budget buying some firewall or router that they can no longer afford, they end up in a situation where they’re just going to keep running that device in an unsafe state and leave themselves vulnerable to cyber attack.”

The groups pushing for this legislative rollback appear to be legacy enterprise hardware manufacturers, who highlighted during the hearing the fact that their technology is increasingly being used in data centers, which seem to be one of the only things the current American economy seems capable of building. Lobbyists for the Consumer Technology Association, which represents many large manufacturers, testified in support of the bill, as did Joseph Lee, who works for Cisco.

“While Cisco appreciates the arguments offered in favor of right to repair devices, not all digital technology devices are equal. A router used in a home is fundamentally different from the infrastructure equipment used to manage a power grid or secure confidential state agency data,” Lee said.

Chris Bresee, a lobbyist with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, also highlighted the fact that, broadly, there is IT equipment that will need repairs at data centers.

“A growing number of products in data centers with connection to our electric grid as well. It is of the utmost importance to safeguard these critical systems,” he said. “This is not an argument against repair or against consumers rights, it is a recognition that fixing a smartphone is not the same as modifying systems that keep the lights on for our country.”

The argument being made by these lobbyists and major tech companies is that only the manufacturers or their authorized representatives should be allowed to fix these types of electronics. But, again, the definition of “critical infrastructure” is so broad that it can be applied to almost any type of electronic, and there is nothing fundamentally different between a router used at a data center and a router used in a school, business, or home.

“You look at who is backing this bill, it is large firms like Cisco and IBM. They sell information technology equipment to tens of thousands of Colorado businesses, and they are looking to create a de facto monopoly on that service, which exists in the states that have denied this business to business right to repair,” Paul Roberts, a cybersecurity expert and founder of SecuRepairs testified. “The big tech companies backing the bill are using a very real concern about cybersecurity and resilience of US critical infrastructure to pad their bottom line, locking in a monopoly on service and repair. Cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure are rampant and have nothing to do with information covered by Colorado’s right to repair law.”

404 Media

2025-10-15 14:03:19

The End of Windows 10 Support Is an E-Waste Disaster in the Making

Wednesday’s end of free Windows 10 support is an environmental disaster in the making, with as many as 400 million computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 set to be cut off from receiving free security updates. The move is an egregious example of planned obsolescence that will inevitably result in the early deaths of millions of computers that would have otherwise had years of life left, and it is set to affect as many as 42 percent of all Windows computers worldwide.

“There’s 400 million computers that are going to enter the waste stream. That’s a disaster, just in terms of the sheer volume,” Nathan Proctor, director of consumer rights group PIRG’s right to repair campaign, said on the 404 Media Podcast. “And then you have people who are going to ignore the warnings and use a computer that’s insecure, so there’s going to [eventually] be some widespread security problems with these older, unsupported, no longer getting security updates computers.”

Microsoft has said it “will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.” The problem with this is that millions of computers don’t have the technical specs to move to Windows 11, and some large, unknown number of Windows 10 devices are owned and operated by businesses, governments, and large organizations like schools and nonprofits whose procurement rules do not allow them to operate devices that are no longer getting security updates. This means that these organizations will necessarily have to buy new devices, which has become a big topic of conversation on the r/sysadmin subreddit, a community of IT professionals who manage big fleets of computers.
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This inevitably means that many of those devices are going to end up in landfills and e-waste facilities, and that people are going to have to buy new computers, one of the more egregious examples of planned obsolescence in recent memory. Experts have repeatedly made clear that extending the use of any given device, either through repair, software updates, or just keeping a device for longer, is extremely important, because it delays all the carbon emissions associated with mining the raw materials needed to produce a new device and the energy and emissions associated with manufacturing and shipping that new device.

Notably, Microsoft is going to continue offering security updates to customers who pay for them, meaning that it would be trivial for the company to continue to offer critical security updates for free. This is notable because we have seen unpatched Windows computers and devices turned into ransomware and botnets, most notably the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, in which repurposed, leaked NSA hacking tools attacked computers running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WannaCry was one of the most devastating widespread cyberattacks in history.

Microsoft’s decision to sunset Windows 10 support is particularly concerning considering that more than 42 percent of all Windows users are currently using Windows 10. When Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 8, just 3.7 percent of computers were using it, and just 2.2 percent of Windows users were using Windows 8.1 when Microsoft stopped supporting that operating system.

“More than 40 percent of Windows users still use it,” Proctor said. “So to cut support for something that is legitimately a flagship product is bizarre. No one expects Microsoft to do software updates forever, but when 43 percent of your customers are using it, it’s not obsolete.”

Proctor and PIRG have launched a campaign pressuring Microsoft to extend support. Petitions and open letters of this sort aren’t known for being terribly effective, but when it comes to shaming companies into extending support for environmental and security reasons, there is one very big, very important precedent. In 2023, after widespread outrage from right to repair advocates, consumer rights groups, school districts, and enterprise buyers, Google agreed to extend automatic updates for Chromebooks to 10 years. The move saved millions of devices from going into landfills and ewaste facilities.

“What happened with Google and Chromebooks is an example that gives me hope that we can win,” Proctor said. “During the pandemic, schools bought massive quantities of Chromebooks, then it turns out that Chromebooks have this thing called the AUE [automatic update] date, which is a preset end of support date, which in some cases was just a couple years after the computers were brought brand new. There were photos from the Oakland Unified School District in California of thousands of working Chromebooks that were headed to the recycler because the AUE date had passed and they weren’t getting security updates, which meant they were ineligible to get some of the enterprise software they needed.”

“And so they were getting replaced by the thousands, and we organized a bunch of these school districts and institutional purchasers of Chromebooks,” he added. “Google initially resisted what we were doing, but then after a couple of months, they just flipped and said, ‘OK, we’re going to have 10 years minimum support timeline for all Chromebooks from here on out.’”

You can listen to and watch 404 Media’s full interview with Nathan Proctor here.

Chromebooks will get 10 years of automatic updates

Chromebooks are getting 10 years of automatic updates, plus new features to help devices last longer.

^{Prajakta Gudadhe (Google)}