A discussion held in a far-away country with crazy legal system

The discussion at http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.75691.30
(titled “Excuse me: you are unsecure”) illustrates the situation in a country where people do not understand the difference between breaking mechanical locks and breaking into computers or Web sites.

I said it in the past and I am reiterating the point.

A burglar can break only one physical lock at a time. Therefore vulnerabilities in locks has a built-in limit on the possible damage to society. Working societies do not have enough burglars to exploit the vulnerabilities in locks. Existing laws are also adequate to deal with those who chose the careers of burglars.

On the other hand, a vulnerability in a widely-used software package can cause millions of computers to be broken into with a single sequence of keystrokes, once the hacker has figured out how to exploit the vulnerability. Therefore, vulnerabilities in software have no built-in limit to the possible damage to society. Therefore, liability must be assigned to software vendors, who leave vulnerabilities unplugged, rather than to hackers.

Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.