The whole “Doom can be played on” meme has been largely played out, especially after reaching its logical conclusion last month. However, Doom being played on a John Deere tractor is more than just a continuation of the meme; it’s a big win for the right to repair movement.
At last weekend’s DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Australian hacker "Sick Codes" revealed his John Deere tractor screen running a farm-themed copy of Doom. The display was a victory for the right to repair movement as it proved several models of popular tractors could be hacked.
"Farmers prefer the older equipment simply because they want reliability. They don’t want stuff to go wrong at the most important part of the year when they have to pull stuff out of the ground," Sick Codes told Wired in an interview. "So that's what we should all want too. We want farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong, and now that means being able to repair or make decisions about the software in their tractors."
For decades, John Deere has had a virtual monopoly on farm equipment in the United States, and it uses that power to include anti-tamper mechanisms on its tractors, forcing farmers into costly repair contracts and preventing them from fixing their own hardware. Along with Apple, the right to repair movement uses John Deere as a prime example of why legislation is needed to allow owners to fix their own stuff.
John Deere has fought the right to repair movement every step of the way, even going so far as creating its own branded Monopoly board game so that Googling "John Deere monopoly" only brings up ads for the game instead of a bunch of bad press.
Sick Codes took months to crack John Deere’s hardware and it required some pretty sophisticated methods. He hopes that the knowledge he gained in jailbreaking John Deere’s tractors can be used to create a tool to hack other tractors a lot more easily.
And while those hacks are likely just so farmers can fix their own tractors, it’s nice to know they could be playing Doom while they’re at it.
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