[Politech] Reply to column over "A new tech battle brews in D.C." [ip]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Tue Nov 04 2003 - 04:50:31 PST

  • Next message: Declan McCullagh: "[Politech] Why not to mirror Diebold documents: privacy concerns [priv]"

    [Todd says this legislation is about "commercial accountability," but it 
    does not apply only to commercial sites. It applies to open source and free 
    software downloads as well and could put those developers in prison unless 
    they're careful. But the broader point, that perhaps I didn't make as 
    strongly as I should in the column, it is not the business of the U.S. 
    government to set social policy of this sort. I'm sure I can think of lots 
    of mandatory-labels-backed-by-jail-time that would be helpful for me if 
    they were appeared on software, but in a free country, it's not the 
    business of Congress to require them. --Declan]
    
    ---
    
    Reply-To: "todd glassey" <tglassey@private>
    From: "todd glassey" <todd.glassey@private>
    To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@private>
    References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031103131349.021ef808@private>
    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....
    
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