David Kastrup wrote:
> Sigh. A program is not a legally responsible entity. The responsible
> party is the _writer_ of the program. I can't push away the
> responsibility about what a program of mine does to somebody else.
>
> Computer viruses are _exclusively_ executed by people different from the
> virus author, on thousands of computers. Does it make _them_ reponsible
> for what their computers do? Does it make the infected _programs_
> responsible? Does it make the _computers_ responsible? Does it make
> the _virus_ responsible?
>
> No, the responsible party is the virus _author_. What happens is a
> consequence of what _he_ did and intended.
The reason for that is the law:
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1030.html>
(5)(A)(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program,
information, code, or command, and as a result of such
conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization,
to a protected computer;
Virus writers did not automatically become criminals. The law needed
to be amended to make them so. Barring such a special law, actions
done by a computer program are the responsibility of the person who
causes that program to run.
In any case, the actions taken by a computer pursuant to readying a
dynamically loaded library for execution are explicitly defined as
not infringing by US copyright law and are permitted by the GPL with
no restriction.
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