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We've not been trained for this: life after the Newag DRM disclosure [video]
- aszantu 2y agoI think i've seen the first part of this problem a while ago. Good stuff
- KORraN 2y agoRelated: original story from one year ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38788360
- progbits 2y agoThere must be strong punishment for frivolous lawsuits. This company is entirely in the wrong and the execs should be in prison, but instead they are wasting time and money with the copyright and other bullshit, trying to demotivate and distract the researchers.
- visarga 2y ago> they are wasting time and money with the copyright and other bullshit One more reason copyright deserves to die.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoMaybe not die, just get reformed and shortened considerably
- 93po 2y agoI think intellectual property is a really bad concept, but I will acquiesce that short-term protection on some ideas, which can faithfully accounted back to significant investment cost, is a fair compromise. However this would never work well in our current system, and I'd rather there simply be not IP laws at all.
- miki123211 2y agoPolish person here, as far as I understand, our SLAPP protections are basically nonexistent, which is why this is allowed to happen. In the US, a lawsuit like this would never fly.
- consp 2y agoIm not familiar with polish law but does the loser pay all like in most other countries in the EU? (And pays more if deemed frivolous) does not solve the money up front problem but might bite them in the ass afterwards.
- jakozaur 2y agoThe loser pays, but the fees are capped in Poland relatively to low amount.
- jakozaur 2y agoIn the USA there are many lawsuits and they could bankrupt you just by making a painful discovery. Though Poland needs to modernize it's law.
- jdiez17 2y agoDelay, deflect, derail.
- phantom_wizard 2y agoThis "company" is strongly connected with previous government and their prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki (company owner is his close colleague), they work more like organized crime than legal entity copying the Russians. Sometimes, but not often, they even make some assassinations and I'm afraid it may be so in this case. There was a female deputy Magdalena Biejat, now a president candidate, who was trying to make some public inquiry but the deputies from other party prevented that. It all works because the former ruling party organized around themselves some kind of semi-religious cult consisting of around 1/3 of nation, usually older people that oppose everything they don't understand.
- praptak 2y agoIt was MPs from both parties: Adamczyk (PiS) and Sowa (PO) who opposed the investigation[0]. When it comes to "helping the business" both parties act the same way. [0] https://www.wnp.pl/logistyka/chca-by-sprawa-newagu-zajely-sie-sluzby-pojawil-sie-powazny-zarzut,890817.html https://www.wnp.pl/logistyka/chca-by-sprawa-newagu-zajely-si...
- klausa 2y agoI’m polish and I legitimately do not know what are you talking about. Mind expanding a bit about your perceived dramatis personae here?
- seba_dos1 2y agoHaven't you mistaken Magdalena Biejat (senator and presidential candidate) with Paulina Matysiak (deputy making inquiries, now sued by Newag as well)? They're coming from the same political background, but are in fact two distinct women :)
- immibis 2y ago> It all works because the former ruling party organized around themselves some kind of semi-religious cult consisting of around 1/3 of nation, usually older people that oppose everything they don't understand this describes every country's conservative party btw
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI think there should be professional association punishment for arguments presented in court that done so knowingly in bad faith. The examples given in the mental gymnastics used to claim copyright infringement is a great example. It's blatantly false and not true, and it's presented despite knowing it will be easily countered, because the FUD it provides to the jury makes it appear like a stronger case. It's arguing to prey on the vulnerabilities of human psychology rather than doing so in good faith and trying to represent someone's rights under the law.
- Kwpolska 2y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524568 If you want to donate to the legal effort, the CCC has started a legal fund: https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2024/das-ist-vollig-entgleist https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2024/das-ist-vollig-entgleist
- grzaks 2y agoDragon Sector FTW. Trzymam kciuki!
- MrMcCall 2y agoNot all heros wear capes. I love those guys. "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" --RATM That is, IMO, the most important album of the 20th Century.
- praptak 2y agoNewag, the company from the presentation is still getting fat government contracts: https://en.railmarket.com/news/rolling-stock/25459-newag-s-griffin-200-locomotives-ready-for-service-at-pkp-intercity https://en.railmarket.com/news/rolling-stock/25459-newag-s-g...
- nicce 2y ago:( Feels like the money is flowing into multiple directions.
- H8crilA 2y agoI think it's a case where money / influence may indeed be flowing in both directions, but fundamentally the trains are working. Unless they experience the International Compressor Failure Day, or randomly clip GPS coordinates of a "dead zone" and simply refuse to move forward - but that just means some money hadn't flown where some crooked people expected it to flow. One thing that is unclear to me is who is backing whom. The Left / Together Party backs our guys - no surprise there, all lefties love trains. But they are not such a big party in Poland, they can raise some ruckus in the media but I am not sure they can offer comprehensive legal/political backing in order to score a victory. They certainly would like to, it's a great story that would add them some voters.
- ajuc 2y agoThese things are pretty random and don't usually align with party boundaries. Train lovers / open source / hacker communities are marginal interests groups. If a MP is from the region where the factory is - he might support it just because of that. Morawiecki famously has close friends in Newag board and PIS as a whole is on the Newag side it seems. Razem has Paulina Matysiak who is a big train nerd so she's on the right side of this issue, but for a few decades the biggest supporter of hacking/open source culture in Poland was PSL's Waldemar Pawlak (he even organized Linux conferences in Palace of Culture :) ). I only found out when I attended one such conference in late 2000s and he had a presentation about Linux/Open Source in administration. It did not seem to turn the whole PSL into open source supporters and their image of backward/naive farmers certainly doesn't match with that. Whenever there's some politicized case parties switch sides depending on temporary interests (see protests against ACTA back in 2011 vs PIS defending their Pegasus affair and spying on opposition members and journalists in 2060-2022).
- lifestyleguru 2y agoThis happens in every industry heavily interconnected with politics. An individual revealing fraud or corruption is subject to regular bullying and stalking or to SLAPP when the case has gained publicity. Only now the German and American standards have arrived to Poland, long awaited.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoYeah, Eva Joly's memoirs were instructive in this... in particular that discussion with a general who told her how she was lucky to be investigating the oil business, rather than the weapons business, or she would be dead already.
- lousken 2y agoshouldn't EU also investigate this a little?
- gostsamo 2y agoThe EU is not a federal government. It can investigate only if there is misuse of EU budget money or the country government is breaching it's union obligations. Otherwise, the country aligns its laws to the common european framework and then the country government is responsible for investigating when someone breaks those laws.
- ajuc 2y agoIt's VERY unlikely EU funds were never involved. Public transport and transport infrastructure is often incentivized with public money, usually with EU participation. It's hard to find big projects that had 0 EU funding.
- throw5959 2y agoIt's not a magic spell that works across corporate entity boundaries. The company itself must have taken a relevant contract project. There must be a clear intent to defraud the EU fund (defrauding others is not enough).
- csdreamer7 2y ago> There must be a clear intent to defraud the EU fund (defrauding others is not enough). Saying defrauding others does not seem right to me. If you defraud a distributor of EU funds, that may have impacted EU funds; they would have a claim. Do you have a source for your assertion?
- throw5959 2y agoI meant defrauding others who might have used EU funds to pay for your services - that's not defrauding the EU and a different court and agency will handle it.
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- Uw5ssYPc 2y agoSkilled polish hackers exposed corpo greed. Well done!
- MrMcCall 2y agoWhat has been kept in the shadows will be brought into the light. Vampires fear the light of truth for good and proper reasons.
- trod1234 2y agoIt is actually far worse than just corporate greed. It shows an embedded vulnerability into the entire supply chain, a national security issue caused by corruption. They should get awards and payouts for bringing this to light now rather than the lives it would cost during a world war. If the company makes it so these trains stop functioning once they are in specific locations, what determines that location? A weak GPS radio signal (which have had issues with spoofing in the past)? What would happen if that radio signal was maliciously crafted and broadcast towards trains with targeted payloads that engage this functionality? Harvests/food stuffs rot? This line of thought doesn't require genius level IQ, given the plots in some of the movies today even a relative dunce could compare and come up with this. Food security has been an issue for every country for millennia.
- immibis 2y agoGovernments don't care about saving lives, except their own.
- trod1234 2y agoGovernments that have functioning representatives do, because by doing so it saves themselves. When the delusional, blind, and evil get into positions of power like this, take no beneficial action, make systems brittle and prone to breakage, and act as a front-of-line blocker for others that would take action to correct, then things go bad, really bad. Their actions end up culminating in self-induced destruction directly or more often indirectly. Once you have no food, there is no way to produce it fast enough. If you can't transport it, there is no way to get it to locations with demand (it rots). There are many cascade failures where after some critical juncture has been met, there is nothing that can be done to resolve the issue. A kobayashi maru, a great wave of destruction that you know is coming, but hasn't arrived yet, but everything is in its path (including themselves), and they can't change that. Its the fundamental nature of evil people to destroy themselves, and others within their sphere of influence, and they most often don't even realize it because they've accepted delusion making them predictable always making choices that seek such outcomes (while claiming and believing they aren't). The unfounded belief that A doesn't lead to B, when observations and objective measures (based externally in reality) and related predictions show A leads to B. They believe, it won't happen, and then it does.
- ozim 2y agoAs much as I support and vouch for the guys. Go public earlier is BS - they went public a year ago when it was clear there is political change in PL. If they would go public in before government change it could have been tragic ( company and company ownership is tightly coupled with prev political power). If previous political power would stay in power I do not believe they would go public. As much as they are showing in presentation work was done when previous political power was still strong - well good that they went public in the end but I do believe there still was shitload of calculations. So if you want to go public watch out calculate best possible time. As much as guys are great don’t believe it is pure heroism - pure heroism is stupid - so they did right thing at right time.
- ptsneves 2y agoAre you sure? I thought the trains were part of of Dolneslaska which means local government, not central one. As far as I know there were no voivodeship changes. I think the lack of traction is endemic and happens regardless of current political power. This is because one of the issues they complain about was how hard was it to explain to journalists. Journalists did not get it and neither did the people. Even the Pegasus affair did not go far with the current legislature. In a more dishonest note, they should have pulled a Russian conspiracy theory on it and it suddenly would be all over the news. As it was done on home turf it just is not so serious. Just look at how the Americans do with the Chinese, there might even be nothing but it is taken seriously.
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