Re: [LINK] "New Laws: Thou Shalt Patch"

From: Rick Welykochy (rick@praxis.com.au)
Date: Wed Aug 01 2001 - 09:54:49 EST


On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Grant Bayley wrote:

> >From Wired:
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45692,00.html
[SNIP]
> But that may be changing. Federal rules that will make it obligatory for
> specific sectors to download virus patches are already here, and more are
> coming.

Let me see now ...

1. Ford Motor Co. produces a car with a defect. The defect turns out
   be a possible source of injury. The result: Ford is *legally liable*
   to recall and fix said vehicles.

2. Johnson & Johnson produce defective silicon breast implants. Even
   though J&J rigorously defends itself against a class action, it
   is found guilty of its breach of care to its customers and pays
   out $100's of millions in damages.

3. There are countless further examples of the *company or agency*
   that produces the faulty product being culpible. As a matter of
   fact, I'm hard pressed to find an example where the *customer*
   who uses a faulty product is found to be liable to take any actions
   of any sort.

And the above story reports with a rhetoric that seems to fly in
the face of sanity and totally contrary to accepted marketplace
responsibility.

Instead of Microsoft simply being found liable for producing a
defective product (that's *ONE* company to fix *ONE BIG PROBLEM*),
the USA is considering making *MILLIONS* of consumers of the
defective product liable for installing fixes to solve the
defects.

And Microsoft is home-free, sitting high on its proverbial
corporate backside, stuffed with $BILLIONS of ill-gained profits,
scraped out of consumer and corporate purses with narry a skerrick
of responsibility for the crappe product it is selling.

I smell a dirty rat. Can anyone say mega-corporate-industrial-para-
legal-capitalist-corruption without gagging?

Cheers
RickW
 

_____________________________________________
Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
       - Henry Spencer



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