How about if we made it YOUR fault if someone breaks into your house whie you're away on holidays, breaks a gas line or something, and then the house explodes and devastates the neighbourhood? After all, why didn't you secure your home?
That's the way it is already. If you left your door wide open, knowing people were going into houses and blowing up entire neighborhoods, you would be responsible. If the lock was defective, and the manufacturer knew that and didn't take corrective action, then they would be responsible.
It would mean you could sue them. You can sue makers of any other type of product if it turns out that product is defective, why not software manufacturers?
Since the owner of a system has no responsibility for the actions of a worm, or any malicious process, that runs without their knowledge, I submit that they also have no rights to the process. No responsibility means no rights.
So, if they have no rights to the process, there is no infringement against them when we neutralize it. If someone wants to claim that their rights were violated by our taking out the attacking process, then they should be held accountable for the actions of the process from its inception. They can't have it both ways.
That, I think, is a good point. The solution, however, is not to make the counterattack legal, thus continuing to absolve people of responsibility, but to make the owners of the systems legally responsible for their failure to secure their systems. If your system is 0wn3d and used to launch a DDoS attack on AOL (or Slashdot, Kuro5hin, whoever), then AOL should have the right to sue you for damages. Your incompetence caused their loss.
You say you can't afford to pay? Tough. Should have thought of that before you put your insecure system online. You say it's the fault of the manufacturer for selling the insecure system in the first place? Take them to court. Too expensive? Well, if their system is too expensive to use, then people won't use it.
Take, for example, an ugly, little wiggle-work of a thing that Michelin plans to implant in its tires, beginning in 2005. Gettys calls it a "radio frequency identification transponder," or an RFID.
The RFID technology allows vital tire identification information-such as tire size, type, serial number, date of manufacture and speed rating-to be stored on a chip the size of a match head.
Unless you have lots of investments, it's not that difficult. All I have is 2 bank accounts, so I just do the 1040 with no attachments. By next year I'll be itemizing deductions (what with the house payment) but that's not difficult either. Keep all your deductible receipts in a box and pull tham out in January.
Yeah, I was expecting to be modded "minus infinity, was redundant last century." But I couldn't resist. "Insightful" Ye Gods. A further sign of the Decline and Fall of Slashdot.
Hell, I wouldn't even hang out here, except kuro5hin is so damned slow you'd think it was at the end of a dial up line or somethin'.
At an hour long, in black and white, and starring a miracle-fiber toupee with an actor attached, the material that ultimately became "Star Trek: Nemesis" might have entered the canon as classic TV.
At twice that length, realized at Paramount's most exquisite level of technical excellence and starring a bald guy who can actually act, "Star Trek: Nemesis" is an ordeal....
... The Remans (natives of Remus, doncha know) have acquired a DNA strand from Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Godard - Jean-Luc Picard, I always make that mistake - and cloned a mini-him. Why? Because, as we all know, the captain of the Starship Enterprise is the world's coolest dude, so this second version will by genetic destiny be high class in the capability department.
Anyhow, mini-Picard...take on Starfleet and eventually the universe. And who is there to stop him but Picard and the big Frisbee with the two flashlights attached?
But the movie is slower than molasses on the dark side of Uranus. Worse, it's tacky....Tiny and blurry on the tube, it's cute and adorable. Blown out to 36 feet by 18 feet, and, worst of all, in actual focus, it just seems depressing.
...Demographically, the whole "Star Trek" shebang must skew toward the Alzheimer's generation. We ain't in a country of young men. The movie is almost utterly devoid of youth; the two babes (Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi and Dina Meyer as Commander Donatra) could be your grandma, and most of the guys look like they need oatmeal twice a day because their teeth and gums hurt and they want to stay regular...
Was the Extras Union on strike or something? There must be seven speaking roles in the whole damned thing...
Even the big effects payoff... looks disconcertingly dead....
In the rubble, certain graces should be noted. Stewart, as ever, is utterly professional and always believable. While all about him people like Hardy are overacting and people like Jonathan Frakes as Riker are underacting (possibly because he has almost nothing to do in the film except bark "Retro-designate the photon torpedo attack module!" and fistfight a guy in a rubber mask that somebody left on the radiator overnight), Stewart is acting. It's an actual performance - elegant, crisp, entirely committed. Then there's Brent Spiner as Data, the adenoidal android; I hate the silver goo they paint on his face to signify his mechanistic endo-soul, but he always seems the most human of the characters, and in this film he's the only one to project recognizable emotion.
Slashdot Mirror
Stealing someone else's insightful post.
That's the way it is already. If you left your door wide open, knowing people were going into houses and blowing up entire neighborhoods, you would be responsible. If the lock was defective, and the manufacturer knew that and didn't take corrective action, then they would be responsible.
It would mean you could sue them. You can sue makers of any other type of product if it turns out that product is defective, why not software manufacturers?
So, if they have no rights to the process, there is no infringement against them when we neutralize it. If someone wants to claim that their rights were violated by our taking out the attacking process, then they should be held accountable for the actions of the process from its inception. They can't have it both ways.
That, I think, is a good point. The solution, however, is not to make the counterattack legal, thus continuing to absolve people of responsibility, but to make the owners of the systems legally responsible for their failure to secure their systems. If your system is 0wn3d and used to launch a DDoS attack on AOL (or Slashdot, Kuro5hin, whoever), then AOL should have the right to sue you for damages. Your incompetence caused their loss.
You say you can't afford to pay? Tough. Should have thought of that before you put your insecure system online. You say it's the fault of the manufacturer for selling the insecure system in the first place? Take them to court. Too expensive? Well, if their system is too expensive to use, then people won't use it.
maybe they'll both drown.
But that's true of ,say, unix 'root' vs Vax VMS 'superuser'. Root doesn't map directly to the equivalent on any non-unix OS.
Yes there is. It's called "administrator".
Unless you have lots of investments, it's not that difficult. All I have is 2 bank accounts, so I just do the 1040 with no attachments. By next year I'll be itemizing deductions (what with the house payment) but that's not difficult either. Keep all your deductible receipts in a box and pull tham out in January.
Hell, I wouldn't even hang out here, except kuro5hin is so damned slow you'd think it was at the end of a dial up line or somethin'.
I dunno, ever use Outlook?
I wouldn't be surprised to see that in the US.
I don't think Mr Source is all that much of a techie.
Admittedly, not as bas as WHFS, which used to be an alternative station, but only barely not as bad.
Running Linux?
ummm. something something...
Ummm. No thanks.
I loved this line:
If I have misspelled or mischaracterized any of the above, please send corrections to eatme@Idontgiveashit.com
or something like that.
$300k profit isn't tremendous but, considering that the third largest bankruptcy in US history has just been announced, it's not bad. Not bad at all.
How the hell can we get the law tossed by the courts if we win at trial?
A mineshaft gap!
And if these technologies do jam radars, is there an application in the field of speeding ticket avoidance?
I've got the hardcover of that book. Interesting to re-read it and see how much, and how little, has changed.