The manufacturer is trying to evoke "murky status".

But both national law states it's OK, and there is a ruling by Court of Justice of the European Union stating that Reverse Engineering done by owner even of a program license (EULA style) to make it work or fix errors is legal.

> But in Europe, the legality of what Dragon Sector did is murkier. [...] Cory Doctorow explained in his excellent Pluralistic blog that Article 6 of Europe's 2001 Copyright and Information Society Directive is generally stricter on DRM circumvention than Section 1201 of the DMCA, and does not have a specific repair exemption. Because of this law, Doctorow told 404 Media that "there is now an extra layer of jeopardy for these researchers. They were brave to come forward..."

If the law is huge and complex, and a large company wants to make your life hell...

I don't think this is true. I think the legality of what they did is totally clear under article 5 & 6 of the EU Computer Programs Directive. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...

Reverse Engineering (Decompiling) software that you own to fix errors and allow interoperability is explicitly allowed.

I don't think that you are reading that like a lawyer would.

For example article 6, part 2 (a) does not allow the information retrieved to be used for any purpose other than establishing interoperability. The hackers stepped over that line when they released some of what they discovered for the purpose of publicly criticizing the manufacturer.

There's ECH ruling that fixing errors is legit case of interoperability.

I hope that you are correct.

I fear that (allowing for the "someone with enough money and lawyers can make your life hell" effect) you are not.

I think this should be filled under sabotage of critical infrastructure.

It is either that or DRM means the OEM gets to remotely shut down entire train network whenever they like? Imagine the money one could make with such a service.

From what I gathered in Polish media, the Dragon Sector's attorney has implied they are eyeing exploring this possibility legally.

yeah screw this. if they are claiming that they hacked their DRM they should absolutely counter sue that this DRM counts as sabotage and/or domestic terrorism. There was literally code in there that told the trains to stop working after X date if it sat still for X amount of time.

That's bonkers. And criminal.

Prosecution started working from statues that talk about crimes of preventing someone from operating, as well as manipulation or prevention of proper handling of data relevant to national security and/or transportation.

Neither cares about breaking DRM or IP, but third party (including vendor) manipulation.

Yes, imagine if a individual did this and not a company. A individual would probably go to jail.

DRM is, generally, about whether or not you can copy the files, or how you use the software (whether it's licensed use).

This isn't DRM (though that's bad too). It's far worse. It's ransomware, they hijacked trains. Everyone involved should be locked in a dungeon for the better part of a century.

>If the law is huge and complex, and a large company wants to make your life hell...

Newag's revenue is about $300 million. This isn't Siemens.

There was an EU ruling on the subject, this year, stating explicitly that you can decompile software to fix bugs, under certain restrictions.

https://www.traple.pl/legalna-dekompilacja-programu-komputer...

The article is in polish, but auto-translate should do it's job easily.

In some EU countries it's also legal to reverse engineer computer programs fully when compatibility with other computer systems is the goal. Without the need from any authorisation of the copyright holder and it doesn't have to be buggy or broken.

That's EU-wide law, plus the EEA.

We also have this right:

The person having a right to use a copy of a computer program shall be entitled, without the authorisation of the rightholder, to observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do.

Article 5(3) and 6.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...

But those articles in no way gives one the right to harm the rightholder's business practices. For example by exposing them to public criticism. That potential limitation is implied in both 5.3 and 6.2.a.

I don't know what other provisions of EU law might apply here. But it is literally the job of the lawyers issuing the threats to find potential gotchas like that. I would assume that they are competent.

Similarly it's criminal to put undisclosed lockouts preventing owner of the device from using it.

>rightholder's business practice

you cant call breaking someone elses property a business practice

Oh, I didn't know it was an EU-wide directive. Estonian copyright law has contained that paragraph since 1992.

Not only that, the article being from American media, even with the footnote, the commenters, miss the whole point about copyright being exclusively American concept and we don’t have this in EU. We have IP and authorship rights that work differently. See last part for explanation: https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/15/french-judge-rules-gpl-lice...

since when copyright does not exist in Europe?

For instance, in Poland (which is in Europe) you have all rights to create copies of software, music, movies, for your personal use after paying for the original copy. You cannot do this under copyright which strictly forbids you from creating copies of the original media. Copy-right, as a right to create copies.

In this meaning, copyright is not the same as authorship rights, which is a basis of intellectual property protection in Europe.

Similarly for software patents, they do not work in EU.

> you cannot do this under copyright which strictly forbids you from creating copies of the original media.

copyright having exceptions does not mean that copyright does not exist

unless you claim that copyright does not exist in USA because they have fair use?

It's badly expressed (and not exactly relevant to the train lockout issue), but no, Copyright as in the american sense does not exist in Poland, and similarly in many other European countries.

That's why we have the relevant legal act discuss separate aspects of "moral" and "financial" "Author's rights" to a creation, instead of just singular "copyright", and why American-style "public domain" does not exist in Polish legal system, or that of many other EU countries (US' style public-domain involves effectively losing all rights to the creation, including moral ones, whereas those are non-dismissible, non-transferable and permament in Polish law).

The exact way things differ would probably require a philosopher and a lawyer to discuss differences of.

It was introductory lecture not treated really seriously, but what was described to me is that there is

(a) copyright (b) moral rights

which are separate. Maybe it was badly described or I misremember what I learned decade ago.

I suspect that the legal differences are less than claimed.

The first test of an open source license in court was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer. It was initially lost on a somewhat similar argument. Namely that it was a contract, not a copyright license, and then was an unenforceable contract and therefore invalid. This decision was reversed on appeal.

I have no particular reason to believe that the first French judge to rule on an open source license did a better job than the first US judge to do the same. Both ruled against the license.

That was 2020. The case evolved in favor of the GPL, see e.g. https://www.april.org/violation-d-une-licence-libre-entr-ouv...

It's strange. Usually the competition for train contracts is quite fierce and train operators have a lot of power dictating terms.

This is not some david vs goliath thing.

European Railway Agency, through EU directives, secured unbundling of maintenance& repair operations from vendors. Vendors no longer are allowed to claim trade secrets or IP as reason for not providing complete and effective maintenance & repair documentation suitable for performing all levels of maintenance.

Since then, MRO is purchased through separate tender process - and NEWAG didn't win several times.

Yeah, the more I look into this the more dire this looks for Newag.

This is a consequence of the train operator winning a court judgement to permit them to use third parties for servicing the trains, followed by "technical measures" of the manufacturer to cripple the trains if this was actually done.

Trains are often, somehow or another, public infrastructure. (In Poland it looks like they are run by state-owned companies, mostly?) Countries should work in the interest of their populations, so really we hope David vs Goliath here, except Goliath is the good guy and also hopefully wins.