Who is Responsible? The Developer? The User?

Anonymous Coward II asks: "I am working on a paper for a computer ethics course, and need to answer the following question: Who must be held responsible: The person that develops a software that will (or can) be used to illegal ends (like to break into a computer system, to illegaly monitor other users, a virus, etc), or the person that use it afterward? I'd like to know what Slashdot users think, and what is the answer according to the law." Software is a tool, just like any other, so when things go wrong I think this then boils down to a question of personal responsibility or negligence. What are your opinions?

Comments

Question of ethics or law?

[evilpenguin]

I think the law has to treat the person who uses a product for illegal means as the "guilty" party. The person who makes it bears no automatic culpability.

This is my general take. Gun manufacturers are not responsible for murders committed with guns. Now, I'm not a gun nut, but I think this is legally right.

The same should hold true for the authors of nmap and queso (to name a couple tools that system crackers might use) and the authors of pgp and gpg (to name a couple tools that criminals or terrorists might use).

Now, if it is a question of ethics, you've opened an entirely different can of worms. Ethically, I think several guns need a closer look. I think teflon tips are something that raise ethical questions. I think nmap has a few grey areas (what legitimate use requires the micro-fragmentation feature? That's there just to avoid string scanning intrusion detection.), but in each of these cases (except maybe those teflon tips) I think the law has to protect the author/maker and hold the user accountable.

If we hold that the maker/author is responsible for all of the ways in which their product/idea is used, then we should have locked up Darwin because his ideas contributed to holocaust. We should lock up the inventor of the circular saw because it has maimed and killed. And so on...

Ethics lies behind law, but the cliched figure of justice that adorns so many government buildings (at least so many American ones) wields a scale, a sword, and she is blindfolded. The sword is two edged as well. It may be a cliche, but it is an apt one. The law is not ethics. The law is the minimum interference to maintain the social order. While many conservatives in this country will argue with me about the law being minimal, it is certainly not the opposite. You can write and buy a book about how to crack safes. That's legal. Crack somebody else's safe, and you've broken the law. It seems absurd, but it isn't. To write a book on how to crack safes (so long as you believe in the idea of private property) is unethical, but I for one would not want to see it made illegal.