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| Tracktor hacking |
To avoid the locks that John Deere puts on the tractors they buy, farmers throughout America have started hacking their equipment with firmware that's cracked in Eastern Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums. Tractor hacking is growing increasingly popular because John Deere and other manufacturers have made it impossible to perform "unauthorized" repair on farm equipment, which farmers see as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time.
A license agreement John Deere required farmers to sign in October 2016 forbids nearly all repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment … arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." The agreement applies to anyone who turns the key or otherwise uses a John Deere tractor with embedded software. It means that only John Deere dealerships and "authorized" repair shops can work on newer tractors.
Farmers have been pushing for right-to-repair legislation that would invalidate John Deere's license agreement. In the meantime, they have started hacking their machines because even simple repairs are made impossible by the embedded software within the tractor.