Hacker News Reader

Comment by kozak | Hacker News Reader

This is probably perfect for some EU anti-monopoly lawsuit, am I right?

This should be a standard consumer protection law (right to repair), not a monopoly thing :/

EU consumer protection laws generally do not apply to B2B contracts (although member states can gold-plate them to extend their scope).

Sure, but that just means it needs to be adjusted to cover outright sabotage after sale like this.

More like highly criminal behaviour like fraud and extortion.

I don't see how it isn't literal fraud if the behavior isn't documented in the purchasing contracts.

If I understand correctly apart from hardcoded `ifs` there was a backdoor as well.

Russian agencies could use it to slow down transit of military aid to Ukraine.

In my book you could argue a criminal case.

Someone’s definitely going to jail for this. I can’t even think of what the defense’s argument could be.

Maybe “I am friends with the Law and Justice party”?

Most people in Poland don't even understand how rail has been privatized and shattered into half a million companies. To a regular person, if it's a train, it's "PKP" (Polish National Railways) - therefore something the government is responsible for.

I don't think Law and Justice will be happy about some corp screwing with infrastructure and having the voters blame the government for it.

I hope you are right. I'm maybe too cynical, thinking something along the tune of:

"If only more of OUR judges were in place, you wouldn't see such corruption, dear people."

Why not both? What better way to underline the point than pressuring to make an example out of Newag?

EDIT:

PiS has been at the core of political turmoil for the past decade or more, but rail transportation has been an issue for much longer. It's legendary at this point, it transcends politics, and portals you straight into the 1990s. So I feel it would be in the self-interest of everyone in the government to throw the book at Newag right now.

This is true! It would depend on if there actually was a corruption link worthy of protection. I.e., bluster and results, or only bluster.

Edit:

I didn't know the train situation had been bad so consistently long! My sympathies to railgoers. It definitely sounds like all politicians could score by getting Newag some well deserved justice.

After the recent elections that might not be the safest thing to say if you wanted to avoid litigation. PiS didn't do so well and lost their majority and is likely to end up in the opposition.

It seems like some mix of vandalism and fraud too.

I would reach for other laws like sabotage and extortion and something that probably exists specifically for the protection of public infrastructure and charge them criminally and raid the offices and take out the executives in cuffs.

They screwed with the rich and powerful here why not throw the book at them?

Who is the rich? The richest man in the picture is Z. Jakubas, who controls Newag. Forbes estimated his net worth for 1.9 mld PLN in 2021.

Help us, European Union. You're our only hope.

Why does about half the country keep voting for a party that is clearly against the EU then? Is it because of their unwavering love of ransomware and other frauds?

It's not a monopoly, so no. Would make just as much sense to ask for a DMCA takedown of the trains.

Do you think anti monopoly legislation only applies when some company controls some market outright?

Seems like the trains were manufactured by a European corporation so probably not lol.

Do you think European regulations don't apply to European companies? They do, it just gets less publicity when e.g. Criteo get fined for abusive tracking than when Google do.

They do, just less so. It's harder to poke around big industrial players of member states.

Size might let you escape with a slap on the wrist but it’s hard to imagine Poland doesn’t get its pound of flesh over this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com