weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (07/03/88)
In article <274@octopus.UUCP>, pete@octopus (Pete Holzmann) writes: >This issue has been hashed out many times in the past. The net continues to >be at theoretical legal risk for all kinds of real or imagined offenses. >If anyone actually attempts legal recourse for solving any of these problems, >it is likely that a major portion of the net would die. It depends on the potential lawsuit. If it were over third parties trans- mitting a virus via binaries, a lot of sites might quit, but a lot might just stop getting binaries. > Practically speaking, >most other net-offenses are much more likely to be the cause of such legal >action. Why? Because malicious postings/programs are extremely rare. I would expect that libel/slander charges will continue to be thrown about, and that not a single lawsuit will come of it. Translating net.flamage into *KNOWINGLY* stating false facts is absurd. As an example, based on an actual lawsuit threat, I still wonder if Tim Maroney actually believes that we at Brahms really and honestly DO think that Timbo is a genius, and our calling him "stupid" and "Captain Carnage" and "incapable of reading" was a DELIBERATE oversight, having nothing to do with the honest opinions we got from reading his articles. With USENET, it would have been trivial to find perhaps hundreds of volunteers for a court-paid trip to sunny California to testify that they too thought little of Tim's intellect based on his postings. > None were things that any reasonable person would even >*consider* filing a lawsuit over. None resulted in even a hint at legal >action. Yet every week it seems we see a threat of legal action because >of some libel/slander/etc due to arguments getting overheated. But the common wisdom--right or wrong--is that actual damage from flames on the net is ZERO. Quite simply, most "damage" of the type covered by libel/slander is done by opening one's own mouth. As a trivial example, I'm certain that I've convinced people that I'm an "obnoxious supercil- ious prick" far more effectively than anyone else on the net ever could by flaming me over it. Now, what is the possible legal danger from passing a virus in a binary? *ACTUAL* damage--as opposed to the ego-war "so-and-so insulted me" cry- baby garbage--can be done, and only time will tell if someone will be motivated to try and recover some such *ACTUAL* damage via a lawsuit. See the difference?? >It is my opinion [as owner of a half-million dollar company, and S/A to >boot, not that it matters a bit, mind you, especially since I'd hardly >call my operation 'major' :-)] that the risk/benefit factor for binary >postings on the net is far more favorable than for the political/social/ >talk/etc groups. As I said in a previous posting--I agree that you should evaluate your own risks. While prognosticating future Usenet legalities is an impos- sible task, I think it's pretty clear that the two kinds of risks are not so directly comparable. > They generate much more ill-will between net-readers than >the binary postings ever will. Ill-will is one thing. Money lost is quite another. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
pete@octopus.UUCP (Pete Holzmann) (07/03/88)
Okay, I'm convinced that comparing worries about net-flames and worries about
viruses isn't particularly valid.
When thinking about lawsuits, et al, I think a *good* comparison is to
compare the following:
1) Someone posts a malicious program that causes actual damage to a net-user's
system.
2) Someone posts a program (source code even) containing a serious bug that
causes actual damage to a net-user's system.
An interesting reference is to be found in a recent RISKS digest concerning
this. [Quoting from memory now; I probably have some details wrong, but the
essence is correct.] A database error in one part of a major travel-agents'
database system caused the system to fail. The error was propogated throughout
the network and caused major outages all over the place. This problem was
viewed as a 'virus'. Obviously, it is not what we would technically call
a virus. But the public is quickly moving towards a view that any spreading
computer-related problem is a 'virus'.
Thus, both of the cases I cited above could reasonably seen as 'viruses' by
a jury. Clearly, there is more liability on the part of the malicious
originator than on the part of the person who 'innocently' posted a buggy
program. But that doesn't matter to the rest of us. For the rest of the
net, who simply passed along both programs without finding the problems,
the cases are exceedingly similar! We would have been a party to the passing
along of a program that caused damage to a user's system.
Conclusion: If you want to worry about legal hassles from passing binaries
along, you ought to also worry about buggy programs of all kinds.
Pete
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___| \_____ Phone: 408/996-7746weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (07/05/88)
In article <276@octopus.UUCP>, pete@octopus (Pete Holzmann) writes: >When thinking about lawsuits, et al, I think a *good* comparison is to >compare the following: What I'm curious about is if some judge will ever rule that Usenet qual- ifies as an "attractive nuisance". (I think that's the legal term.) ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720