from the good-luck-with-that dept
Back in 2023 we wrote about how regional Polish rail company and a train manufacturer NEWAG had taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize — and drive up the costs of repair. This kind of effort to monopolize repair is common across numerous industries, driving an organic, grass roots “right to repair” reform movement.
The original story by 404 Media noted that NEWAG put code in their train’s control systems preventing them from running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent any time at an independent repair company, and if certain parts had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number. Some independent companies responded by hiring a white hat hacking group dubbed Dragon Sector to bypass the DRM and get the trains running again.
Two years later and it sounds like NEWAG has taken all the wrong lessons from the experience.
The folks at iFixit note that the company has now sued both the Polish repair service SPS that fixed those original trains, and has also gone after the individual members of ethical hacking group Dragon Sector for helping them. NEWAG is looking for $1.7 million for copyright violations and “unlawful competition” in one court, and $1.36 million for unlawful competition and infringement of personal rights in another.
Like most unethical companies trying to monopolize repair, NEWAG tries to insist that this isn’t about making more money, but about the public’s safety. But iFixit notes that the company’s case has several major inconsistencies, including both claiming that the hacking group did and didn’t modify their software:
“Newag claims that the Dragon Sector team endangered passengers’ safety by modifying the software without proper experience. But Newag then turns right around and claims that Dragon Sector did not modify the software at all. They point out that EU law only allows reverse engineering of software in order to fix bugs. And if Dragon Sector did not actually modify the software, it cannot have fixed any bugs, in which case their reverse-engineering must be illegal.”
The Biden FTC under Lina Khan issued a report stating that such safety claims were almost always bullshit; a useful bogeyman used by companies trying to justify anti-competitive, anti-consumer behaviors.
The problem for companies like NEWAG is the harder they try to monopolize repair and bully independent repair shops, the greater public attention and animosity is. The greater public attention and anger becomes, the more likely companies are to see “right to repair” legislative reform forcing them to do what was the right thing in the first place.
Still, there’s no shortage of companies across a dozen different industries which seem to think it’s a good idea to try and monopolize repair through DRM, making parts and manuals hard to find, or engage in “parts pairing” that makes it impossible to simply replace individual “unsanctioned” parts.
Filed Under: consumers, copyright, dragon sector, drm, lawsuit, locomotives, parts pairing, poland, right to repair, trains
Companies: newag, sps
