Guides on how to remove the “eagle” have already appeared on the Internet. What are the penalties for selling a laptop to a student?

Laptops for fourth graders, which were distributed this and last month to the parents of approximately 400,000 children in Poland, are intended to facilitate their learning and help them prepare for school classes. Unfortunately, as could be predicted before the program was launched, some parents have other plans for computers.

“Guides” have appeared on the Internet. Parents check how to remove the eagle from the housing

More and less serious “guides” have appeared on the Internet (some of them intentionally misleading) on ​​how to sell a computer from a government program and how to remove the engraving on the casing next to the trackpad, which was supposed to be a kind of protection. Both activities are obviously against the terms of the program. What are the penalties for breaking these conditions?

When collecting a government laptop from school, the parent must sign an agreement to transfer the equipment, which specifies the rules under which it is transferred. There is information there that the equipment cannot be sold for the first five years after transfer. However, as already noted in , a parent does not sign such a contract under criminal liability.

This means that the risk of a severe penalty for a parent who decides to cash in on a student’s computer is rather small. The government has often explained that the basic security is the engraving, which cannot be removed, but some people have already figured out how to easily “circumvent” this problem.

What are the penalties for selling a laptop to a student? It’s not entirely clear

As he explains, the Act of July 7, 2023 on supporting the development of digital competences of students and teachers includes clearly defined rules for the transfer of equipment, but it lacks information on criminal liability in the event of selling a computer. Computers are also transferred as ownership, which means that violating the contract’s prohibition on resale of the device cannot be considered a crime or misdemeanor. Therefore, there are no grounds for intervention by the police or prosecutor’s office if the practice is detected.

As the portal writes, since a parent’s liability is of a civil law nature, in the event of breaking the ban, the Ministry of Digitization can at most demand a refund of the value of the laptop in court (approx. PLN 2,500-3,000 depending on the model). There are no more serious penalties provided for in the event of detection of the practice, which could have been included in the contract and which would have effectively discouraged dishonest parents from selling the received equipment. It is a pity that despite the high costs of the program (about one billion zlotys), the government did not adequately protect itself against what was, after all, a foreseeable event.