more on good question DMCA used to shut down campus IDsecurity talk

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Dave Wilson <dave () wilson net>
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 07:34:37 -0500 (EST)
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] good question DMCA used to shut down campus IDsecurity
talk


In general, under the law software developers are not liable for any kind
of product failure, including security. Last week, when he was here at
Purdue University -- where I'm on a fellowship studying information
security these days -- I had the opportunity to ask a couple of question of
Howard A. Schmidt, Special Advisor to President Bush for Cyberspace
Security and head of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection
Board. I asked Mr. Schmidt if the government should expose developers to
liability as a spur to develop a better environment. Schmidt said that
liability exposure ultimately drives up costs for users (as in a guy who
defends himself against a suit claiming flawed software has to charge more
for his products to pay off his legal bills). Mr. Schmidt argued that
consumers would eventually choose systems that are more secure, and that
the country needed to give the free market time to work its magic. The
government, he said, is reluctant to interfere with that process. "We will
indeed not regulate," he declared.

 A bit later, I pointed out to Mr. Schmidt that several courts - including
the U.S. Supreme Court - have found that Microsoft Corp. has monopoly power
in the market for desktop computers, and that this monopoly power allowed
the company to force consumers to purchase products that are insecure. I
asked Mr. Schmidt, who was Microsoft's former chief security officer, if he
disagreed with the court's economic analysis. "I'm not a lawyer," he
replied.

-dave

------ End of Forwarded Message

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