As much as it pains me to say this, I feel I must (for sake of argument). There is an assumed risk in using any product. The different analogies that people are coming up with are ludicrous. Given the current political and prejudice* situations, litigation in the courts is not the way to go. Our great nation was founded with freedom in mind, and this freedom is what we try to assist other nations in achieving. It is this Freedom that allows our open market and Freedom of speech. Our freedom of speech may or may not infringe upon a companies “intellectual property”. Would we all be in agreement that no one else took apart the Wright Brothers first Bi-Plane and then reassembled it using their own tweaks? No, I don’t think so. The Wright Brothers and other Great Minds from the generation before us shared their ideas for the benefit of the common good. Proof of this is the existence of the Engineers Club of Dayton Ohio. Back in the day, if people didn’t like what product ABC did or did not do they used the freedom of an open market to purchase someone else’s product or they used their freedom of independent thinking to create a better ABC.
That is what we need to do. Boycott the vendor who does not work with the consumer watchdogs. Should a vulnerability be found “Without criminal intent” a message of said vulnerabilities should be sent to the watchdogs who then work with the vendors. The vendors should make a “reasonable effort” to reproduce the vulnerability (after all the watchdog is most likely going to reproduce it so the vendor should be able to reproduce it). If the vendor fails to take appropriate actions then the vendor should be placed on a black list. The consumers (you and me) then do not purchase items from those vendors. However, we do not need to overwhelm our judicial system with frivolous lawsuits because it is US the consumers who need to ASSUME the risk of making any information public. We all know the only way to have a totally secure system is to not turn it on. Knowing this we must assume that risk and let our customers know the risk. Or it will come down to suing the local news station for announcing the severe lighting storm which in turn struck the office causing a surge which melted the CPU onto the motherboard causing a downtime of 4 hours. During these 4 hours employees were not able to utilize the computer system thus causing a loss of wages…. Come on people…. It is like the cold war scenario all aver again “I can blow your country up more time than you can blow my country up”. No one wins. However, do not under estimate the power of your dollar, which is a war that can (and is daily) be won. Randy Hinders * Prejudices = as in an irrational attitude to sue over the pettiest of things to include someone feelings being hurt… life is hard and it sometimes sucks, get used to it. _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
