Re: product liability (was: Virus Update)

[Jim Mercer <jim () reptiles org>]

On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 12:24:23PM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
> Jim Mercer wrote:
> > the companies that "lost" that $8,000,000,000 are responsible for their own
> > actions.  they ignored the vulnerability reports as well.
>
> I don't accept this argument.  You are saying that we need to sue our 
> customers for using a faulty product, rather than the vendor of the 
> faulty product.  My understanding of product liability doesn't jibe 
> with that illogic.

nope, you need to eat the loss.

the product is not faulty.  the product works as designed.
it may be a poor design, but it is fairly evident that it works as intended.

why blame your customers, or anyone else for that matter, if your email system
executed the enclosed virus? 

if your email system didn't execute the virus, what exactly represents the
loss that you would sue for?

> The only recourse for our customers would have been to use a non-M$ 
> product.  M$ has been using a monopoly position to leverage Internet 
> services.  

M$ has a monopoly because big business (and a large number of consultants)
do not have the guts to migrate their systems away from M$.

> While we encourage our customers to use better products, time and time 
> again, we find that they install M$ anyway.  Their accounting runs 
> on 98+NT, their patient record system run on 98+NT, heck, their 
> constituent mail tracking package runs on 98+NT....  They use NT for 
> "firewall", NAT, etc. 

yep, and when they whine and complain about all the money they "lost" because
they used those products, it is their own problem.  i have no sympathy for
them or their "loss".

> > how long would they keep a voice mail system that automatically dialed the
> > return number, regardless of local or long distance charges?
>
> Speaking from past experience, they would keep a Rolm PBX that fails 
> to record such things -- because it's too expensive to replace the system 
> in lost time and business -- then sue Rolm for the consequential damages 
> (resulting in near bankruptcy for Rolm, which was bailed out by IBM).
>
> But, this case is even worse, the equivalent of incurring a long-distance 
> conference call to every previous caller, upon picking up the phone 
> without dialing anything!

but if they bought the phone system because they thought this "feature" was
useful, then they have no grounds to sue.

> While I may agree with the sentiment, suing our customers for ignorance 
> would likely be counter-productive for regaining lost revenues....

the best way to regain lost revenues is not to "lose" them in the first place.

-- 
[ Jim Mercer                 jim () reptiles org              +1 416 506-0654 ]
[          Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood          ]
[  Don't be fooled by cheap Finnish imitations; BSD is the One True Code.  ]