Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheGlav | Hacker News Reader

Agricultural product producers are one of the biggest offenders when it comes to "right to repair". There's no reason why farmers shouldn't be able to fix their own equipment. These companies make it so farmers can't fix their tractors, they have to go to a dealership. Farmers that, for over a hundred years, have been doing repairs on their own in the field (literally) to get their tractor working again so harvest finishes, still aren't allowed to fix their own equipment. It's not a "reasonable" exemption when there is decades of precedence. Adding a computer to these things should not stop someone from doing this work, and there's no reasonable explanation why someone shouldn't be able to repair something they've had the rights to repair for decades.

View on HN

Agricultural equipment falls into industrial equipment which has different liability concerns for the manufacturer.

If you modify a Ford truck and that modification kills you, you're liable.

If you modify a John Deer tractor and John Deer didn't do everything in their power to stop you from making an unsafe modification, they're liable.

Furthermore, if a farm worker gets killed, maimed, injured from the framer's modification, the farmer is immune from liability and it is still John Deer that would be liable.

https://nationalaglawcenter.org/workers-compensation-for-agr...

> Whether or not someone is eligible for workers’ compensation depends on their state and the industry they work in. There are no requirements at the federal level that mandate states to have workers’ compensation laws. Nevertheless, every state, except for Texas, requires most employers to carry workers’ compensation insurance. However, the majority of state workers’ compensation laws specifically exclude or limit agricultural employers from the workers’ compensation requirement.

Those liability laws need to be corrected.

Industrial operators who modify their equipment are not children, they should be responsible for their actions and trusted to repair it.

Yep - that's where the legal fix needs to start. Until people making the changes are liable for the changes they make to industrial equipment (and this includes things like cranes and generators and such that also have similar issues of repair), the industrial equipment makers are going to be very hard to persuade to support right to repair as it puts them in the spot of even more liability.

Do you have any references for the equipment manufacturer's liability? I find it hard to believe your point as written.

Product Liability in the Farm Equipment Industry - https://youtu.be/NdN577BbnSY

Pay close attention to the standards section and the verdict allocation of case study #1.

> Farmer, arguably the person most at fault, is essentially immune from liability. This would be true in most states due to Workers Comp

> Jury cannot attribute % of fault to Gonzales because he used Employer's equipment. This would not be true in most states.

> Jury wishing to give Gonzales "something" has only Bush Hog and Massey Ferguson to fault. Cannot do a % reduction for fault of Farmer or Gonzales

Thanks for the link, but I still think there's enough nuance in the court system (in any country) to recognise that a manufacturer shouldn't always be held liable for a system just because their logo is on it. There's no law dictating that manufacturers have a duty to make farming equipment impervious to mechanics' failures, and unless there's a clear indication that courts will interpret some law this way, I wouldn't bet on it.

Even in this case, one of the lines of argument seems to have been that the manufacturer was aware of pre-existing safety issues and injuries, yet did not recall the product or adjust its design. That's certainly different than a one-off unauthorised modification blowing up.

And that same reasoning applies to a Nintendo Switch? How many people died from self-repaired Joy-Cons?

I was only addressing the agricultural equipment part.

I suspect that the argument that gaming consoles made was that it is necessary for them to be able to restrict access to repair because failing to do so would make them unable to enforce intellectual property and copy protection on their equipment as required by licenses that they have from publishers.

"This game can only be played in Japan because of {content/licensing}". Enabling full repairs would mean that someone could more easily modify their device to present itself as a Japanese version and now the company and maker is liable for content that is allowed in Japan but illegal elsewhere.

Again, this is an "I suspect" - I don't know for sure what argument they're making - just trying to channel the mind of the corporate lawyers (which isn't an entirely pleasant way to be thinking).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com