Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.
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like fucking clockwork. “we didn’t program our trains to brick themselves when repaired by third parties, and also we’re going to sue these hackers for disabling that code we didn’t write” I’m really hoping this transparent shit gets laughed out of court if they try to sue (and that the corresponding countersuit is damaging as fuck to their inflated bottom line)
Just to be clear, the company is sueing for defemation, in which the hackors claims could have damaged their image. Either way if the hackers are correct they will be able to prove this in court no problem. This would really be bad for the company, so as far as I'm aware they have only threatened this for the media and are not going through with it.
Remember that this isn't America. The legal definition of defamation is probably different. In some jurisdictions, even true statements can constitute defamation.
IANAL, however here you have such a thing: Defamation doesn't have to be considered a crime if it's a public statement of a fact that either concerns public official or is expressed in defense of a legitimate interest (this one here would be right to repair, right to fair competition, strategic interests of the state and some others)
this is basically translation of a snippet from some lawyer's blog, and i'm not fluent in legalese
Not the case in Poland.
(and that the corresponding countersuit is damaging as fuck to their inflated bottom line)
It should really escalate to the European Court and end up in the loophole used by the train manufacturer to be destroyed or at least amended. This violates Right to Own, and would make everyone's life better if it weren't something you could be sued for.
just to be clear: trains run on original, unmodified firmware, they just reverse engineered it and made a tool that allows for unlocking them just like it would be by manufacturer
the newag's narrative is generally bull; and the folks from the dragon sector do have legal representation.
also reverse engineering with the goal to make things interoperable is explicitly allowed by polish author's law (we do follow the continental copyright conventions in poland, so it's not entirely the same as what the common law countries understand as copyright)