[Politech] Reply to column over "A new tech battle brews in D.C." [ip]

[Declan McCullagh]

[Todd says this legislation is about "commercial accountability," but it 
does not apply only to commercial sites. It applies to open source and free 
software downloads as well and could put those developers in prison unless 
they're careful. But the broader point, that perhaps I didn't make as 
strongly as I should in the column, it is not the business of the U.S. 
government to set social policy of this sort. I'm sure I can think of lots 
of mandatory-labels-backed-by-jail-time that would be helpful for me if 
they were appeared on software, but in a free country, it's not the 
business of Congress to require them. --Declan]

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Reply-To: "todd glassey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "todd glassey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Last week's column: "A new tech battle brews in 
D.C."[ip]
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:28:37 -0800

Declan -

Wow - a browser being secure... and well - what can I say. I spent 200 plus
hours over the last 8 weeks patching Microsoft Machines to make them 'safe
to be connected to our campus network' and then I spent 20 hours just
patching my home system. Day after day at the Microsoft WindowsUpdate
site... fixing code that supposed already passed a serious testing and
professional audit.
So - I understand the point of the government not protecting us from
ourselves but since the average mortal has no idea what a patch is or how to
apply one this is an issue - and I have to ask you - what is wrong with
making SW vendors responsible for telling people that their products could
jeopardize the integrity and privacy of those people's systems.
So I don't get this one, the pushback I mean,  this is not about copyright
or DCMA or DRM - its about informing people that have no possibility of
knowing what's in the code they install, that this code may have problems.
Its about saying to people - hey the code you are about to install may open
this machine to various forms of attacks, do you know what you are doing?
and really now - is that such a big deal or more importantly - is it wrong?
My ethics say no way. What this legislation is about is commercial
accountability and one doesn't like it - my feeling is that one should sell
ones wares somewhere that will anyone ship garbage and get away with it.
:-) Todd

PS - think of Bill and Steve possibly being led away in silver bracelets for
shipping a bad copy of DCOM or Internet Explorer....
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