{"id":17513,"date":"2018-10-30T13:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/right-to-repair-smartphone-ruling-loosens-restrictions-on-industrial-farm-iot\/"},"modified":"2018-10-30T13:21:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T13:21:00","slug":"right-to-repair-smartphone-ruling-loosens-restrictions-on-industrial-farm-iot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/right-to-repair-smartphone-ruling-loosens-restrictions-on-industrial-farm-iot\/","title":{"rendered":"Right-to-repair smartphone ruling loosens restrictions on industrial, farm IoT"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, the tech press made a big deal out of a ruling by the Librarian of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office to allow consumers to break vendors\u2019 digital rights management (DRM) schemes in order to fix their own smartphones and digital voice assistants. According to The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, for example, the ruling<\/a> \u2014 which goes into effect Oct. 28 \u2014 was a big win for consumer right-to-repair advocates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Big news for vehicles<\/strong><\/h2>\n

That promises to save millions of consumers some coin, but it may have a far bigger impact on a much smaller cohort: farmers, construction companies, fleet managers and other companies that now have legal permission to fix their motorized land vehicles (cars, tractors, and so on \u2014 owners of boats and airplanes are still out of luck).<\/p>\n

As I noted in a Network World<\/em> post earlier this year<\/a>, many farmers have been struggling to get full benefits of the IoT technology built into their tractors because of restrictions written into their end-user license agreements (EULA). That can limit their use of the information generated about their own farming practices and also keep them from repairing their own equipment without calling in the vendor, as noted by Motherboard<\/em><\/a>. The most publicized issue comes from John Deere, which argued that letting farmers fix their own equipment could lead to music piracy (no, not a joke<\/a>).<\/p>\n