Should software vendors be liable for damages?
In our ultra-litigious society, people sue left and right about almost anything. Make a bad stock investment? Sue! Set yourself on fire by falling asleep while smoking? Sue! Overweight because you eat too much? Sue! Nobody is responsible for their own actions. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Software companies like Microsoft, however, sit unscathed amidst this barrage of law suits because they got a law passed that allows them to disavow responsibility for anything that goes wrong with their programs. There are pros and cons about whether this exemption should be changed. For an interesting exchange of viewpoints, go to a page from Bruce Schneier. Schneier also has an essay at wired.org, where he make this point about the current liability exemption for software makers
The result is what you see all around you: lousy software. Companies find that it’s cheaper to weather the occasional press storm, spend money on PR campaigns touting good security, and fix public problems after the fact than to design security right from the beginning.
The problem with this analysis is that most of the costs of insecure software fall on the users. In economics, this is known as an externality: an effect of a decision not borne by the decision maker.
Personally, I think the whole tort system has to be reformed so that some semblance of logic is restored and personal behavior and responsibility taken into account. However, I also believe that the total exemption from liability that Microsoft and others enjoy is a bit much.
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