FTC's John Deere Lawsuit: The Redactions Say A Lot!
The FTC's legal complaint against Ag giant John Deere is heavily redacted, omitting key details about Deere's actions. But for repair advocates, the message is clear.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week announced a long-expected lawsuit against the agricultural equipment maker Deere & Company. In a January 15th statement, the FTC along with the attorneys general of Minnesota and Illinois announced it was suing Deere & Company “over its use of unfair practices that have driven up equipment repair costs for farmers.”
In a statement (PDF), outgoing FTC Chair Lina Khan said that unfair repair restrictions like those alleged to have been enacted by Deere & Company “can mean farmers face unnecessary delays during tight planting and harvest windows. For some, these delays can mean that months of hard work and much-needed income vanish, devastating their business.” For farmers, long accustomed to fixing their own farm equipment, “these artificial restrictions can seem especially inefficient, with tractors needlessly sitting idle as farmers and independent mechanics are held back from using their skill and talent,” Khan wrote.
FTC calls out Deere’s decades of “unlawful practices”
For decades, Deere has engaged in “unlawful practices (that) have limited the ability of farmers and independent repair providers to repair Deere equipment, forcing farmers to instead rely on Deere’s network of authorized dealers for necessary repairs,” the FTC said in a statement. Deere’s actions juiced its multi-billion-dollar profits on agricultural equipment and parts at the expense of farmers who are burdened with higher repair costs, the FTC’s complaint alleges.
That sounds about right.
As this publication has reported on time and again in recent years, Deere & Company is an iconic U.S. brand that, in the last two decades, has also become a poster child for the trend towards what author and futurist Cory Doctorow has termed “enshittification” - the strategy of using software locks and maximalist copyright laws to pursue restrictive and anti-competitive business models that turn owners into tenants of their devices, drastically increase the costs of owning and operating devices, while undermining the very notion of “ownership.” (E.g. ‘if you own it, you can fix it.’)
Right to repair advocates were encouraged by the lawsuit from the FTC and states.
“We shouldn’t tolerate companies blocking repair,” said Nathan Proctor of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) in a statement. “When you buy something, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. The FTC’s enforcement action will help farmers, and everyone else who believes people should be able to fix their stuff.”
Deere [redacted]?! How dare they!
As to the specifics of Deere & Company’s misdeeds that prompted the lawsuit? Well… that’s a bit less clear, in large part because the FTC’s complaint is heavily redacted, with many of the details of Deere’s business practices and internal deliberations related to repair restrictions blacked out.
