[28599] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: product liability (was: Virus Update)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Tue May 9 14:25:06 2000
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 11:22:48 -0700
From: owen@dixon.delong.sj.ca.us (Owen DeLong)
Message-Id: <200005091822.LAA15210@irkutsk.delong.sj.ca.us>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
As an academic argument, I would like to consider the following:
1. Given: M$ released a product which contained "enabling technology"
which allowed this event to occur.
2. Given: This event was a Virus/Worm which used Visual Basic Scripting
and the Outlook Address Book to duplicate and proliferate
itself to a large number of systems at a fairly high rate
of speed.
3. Given: Storing and forwarding mail costs money.
3. Fact: M$ Has a monopoly position. (Federal court ruling)
4. Theorum: Companies and other Entities which provide relay service
for an organization which falls victim to this event incurred
costs as a result of the event.
Proof:
Statement Reason
=========================================== ==============================
Storing and Forwarding mail costs money. Given (3).
Relays store and forward mail. Definition of Relay.
The virus generated a large amount of mail Given (2), nature of email
to be relayed. forwarding.
Entities providing relay service incurred Given (3) and previous
costs. statements
As such, I would argue that M$ release of a product with such widely known
exploitable vulnerabilities into a the market including customers of any
given relay service entity may, indeed, create standing for that service
entity to sue M$ on the basis of costs incurred due to M$ negligence and
negligent business practices.
Owen
