In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.

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.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The responsability of circulating with a vehicle that abides by safety regulations is of the owners, not the makers.

    You’ll notice that even in the consumer auto segment (which, since run-of-the-mill consumers are not expected to be “experts”, has lost of of ways to make sure they the car they buy is actually certified “road-worthy” upfront because they don’t have the know-how to make sure of it themselves) the actual car owners have the responsability of having a periodic inspection done to the car and repair those things that stop it from being road-worthy (at least that is the case in Europe).

    Outside the consumer segment, I expect that the rules for trains are pretty similar to those for commercial aviation: the manufacturer has no responsability beyond a contractual one (i.e. the purchasing entity probably demands contractually that the vehicles they get comply with regulations, the parts they buy obbey certain specifications and maintenance done by a manufacturer-certified shop delivers a compliant vehicle) and all the regulatory responsability is in the hands of the owner (more specifically the “operator”, as for example for leased planes the airline doesn’t actually own them but they do operate them hence they’re the ones with regulatory responsabilities).

    The USA argument comes from the anti-circunvention legislation for software being part of the DMCA law, said legislation giving rights to the makers of the software to stop changes to it even in devices they do not own. Where such legislation does not apply there is no law forbidding somebody doing whatever changes they want to software as long as they own the device containing said software or have the authorization of the owner of the device whose software they are changing - the only applicable legislation here is Copyright and that only limits the distribution of the software, not the changing of it.

    • damirK@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      That’s a whole lot of energy spent based on completely incorrect assumptions about me or what I was saying so your argument can work. But sure whatever makes you feel like you are right.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        That’s a very weird take.

        You don’t know me and went all weirdly personal full of assumptions about me and without making an actual argument.

        Whatever is going on there, it’s all in your head.