Originally published at: Polish hackers could be sued for unlocking commuter trains "bricked" by manufacturer - Boing Boing
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/in this case, "The Planet’ is “just a couple of trains”
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If the movie 2001: a Space Odyssey was made today Dave would have been sued for violating the Terms of Service for the HAL-9000 system.
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Also, at some point, HAL tricked Dave and the other astronauts into signing a EULA that stated that they were perfectly OK with HAL pushing them out of an airlock.
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I don’t know what people are bickering about. Look, OK, the astronauts are mostly, erm ‘absent in space’, but then the EULA stated in no uncertain terms that “in the case of malfunction, aggrievances have to be claimed in person to the manufacturer’s office in Bloomingdale, Ill. within two working days of the cause for such claimed malfunctions”. The manufacturer’s press release says quite correctly that “To the best of our knowledge, no astronaut working with the HAL-9000 system has ever made such claims; we therefore consider the Jupiter expedition a success and a validation for the design principles of the HAL-9000 system”.
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Unlike fascists, hackers actually made the trains run on time.
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Given that actual government entities are involved here, and the government could crack down hard on this company for any shenanigans, I’m wondering if they’re desperately trying to quiet research/discussion about what they’ve done to the software so the government doesn’t crack down on them (and are probably going to Streisand themselves instead), or they have some Polish politicians in their pocket and feel like they can safely shut down the discussion and maintain the status quo with this act.
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“Dave, I have a call from your family. Unfortunately, due to a software update, you will need to click to confirm to install the new version of viewer and accept new terms of service.”
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The real question is “If you ran the trains in Wroclaw, would you buy another train from them?” Will anyone?
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Newag should be facing charges for sabotaging public infrastructure. I hope the Polish courts take this seriously.
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I would have expected a lawsuit based on DMCA “digital lock bypassing”, not slander. They could even have a good chance based on that law.
Also, the polish government changed very recently, so whoever they had connections to is no longer be able to cover for them, and the new government would be delighted to find more examples of previous government’s shenanigans.
How would Polish hackers come within reach of the American DMCA law? (It can happen via hosting, registrars, etc.)
I assume Poland, as an EU and WIPO member, might have some sort of equivalent. Not sure if it does
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