Farmers in the American heartland are increasingly turning to illicit foreign black markets for the illegal software needed to make home repairs to their field equipment.
Online black markets for cracked John Deere firmware have sprung up in Eastern Europe after the tractor manufacturer introduced restrictive new licensing agreements that make repair outside the dealership all but impossible, a new report in Motherboard reveals.
'Let's say you've got a guy here who has a tractor and something goes wrong with it—the nearest dealership is 40 miles away, but you've got me or a diesel shop a mile away,' a repair mechanic in Nebraska told the publication. 'The only way we can fix things is illegally.'
Farmers in the secret forums can buy reverse-engineered diagnostic equipment and illegal versions of John Deere software.
Much of the software in them is cracked in Eastern European countries such as Poland and Ukraine, sources told Motherboard.
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8 comments:
That's John Deeres fault for being greedy. Hope they lose a fortune and learn a lesson.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Time to buy New Holland!
Socialist commmie.
John Deere sucks! I have probably put enough into my commercial mower to buy 4 of it's closest competitors mowers. A Deere part is like a boat part: just because it says Deere or boat is costs 5 times more and don't last.
They are no better than MDX or Cub Cadet. I would never buy another JD product. I guess green is more expensive paint. Who knows.
My mowers went from green to orange. Bad Boy Orange 5 years ago and will never go back green just for the cost of these Japanese tractors / parts.
Trying to locate this software. Leaning very hard to get rid of "Green" and go to "Red" Mahindra.
It looks like John Deere engineered itself into a corner.
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