---
Reply-To: "todd glassey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "todd glassey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Last week's column: "A new tech battle brews in D.C."[ip]
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:28:37 -0800
Declan -
Wow - a browser being secure... and well - what can I say. I spent 200 plus hours over the last 8 weeks patching Microsoft Machines to make them 'safe to be connected to our campus network' and then I spent 20 hours just patching my home system. Day after day at the Microsoft WindowsUpdate site... fixing code that supposed already passed a serious testing and professional audit.
So - I understand the point of the government not protecting us from ourselves but since the average mortal has no idea what a patch is or how to apply one this is an issue - and I have to ask you - what is wrong with making SW vendors responsible for telling people that their products could jeopardize the integrity and privacy of those people's systems.
So I don't get this one, the pushback I mean, this is not about copyright or DCMA or DRM - its about informing people that have no possibility of knowing what's in the code they install, that this code may have problems. Its about saying to people - hey the code you are about to install may open this machine to various forms of attacks, do you know what you are doing? and really now - is that such a big deal or more importantly - is it wrong?
My ethics say no way. What this legislation is about is commercial accountability and one doesn't like it - my feeling is that one should sell ones wares somewhere that will anyone ship garbage and get away with it.
:-) Todd
PS - think of Bill and Steve possibly being led away in silver bracelets for shipping a bad copy of DCOM or Internet Explorer....
_______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)