19 Oct 2005
Bruce Schneier talks cyber law

Usually I'm with Mr. Schneier 100%, but in this case, well, I don't know. He uses the analogy of a river:

It’s about externalities – like a chemical company polluting a river – they don’t live downstream and they don’t care what happens. You need regulation to make it bad business for them not to care. You need to raise the cost of doing it wrong.

But generally speaking, it's not the ISP that's injecting the "pollutants" into the network stream - it's third parties. Blaming the ISP in this case would be like blaming everyone who has a home on the riverbank for every bit of waste oil that floats by ...

To carry on with this analogy, these third parties usually dump their pollution by parking their chemical trucks on a section of network riverbank owned by an ISP - but do we hold landowners responsible when this happens in the real world, with real chemicals? No, we consider the landowners to be victims of criminal trespass ... why should entities in the virtual world be held to a different standard?

An ISP can act much like a water treatment plant, in that it is possible for them to "clean" most of the pollutants out of the water flowing by. But this always comes at an extra cost in the real world, and is why such "clean pipes" are added value in the virtual, network world as well. It takes real effort to remove polluting chemicals or Trojan horses.

Market forces will drive some ISP's to offer pollution removal as part of their sales offerings, while others just give you access to the river - note the Earthlink and AOL offerings for "virus free surfing". Again, this is as it should be. But to blame the ISP when a virus streams past them, or a new Trojan goes undetected by their scanning software, seems to me to be counter-productive, and a virtual form of blaming a victim.

ISPs must be made liable for viruses and other bad network traffic, Bruce Schneier, security guru and founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security, told The Register yesterday.

(link) [The Register]

00:00 /Technology | 2 comments | permanent link

Man Bites Dog, Dog Bites Back

i·ron·ic \i ra nik\ adj.

AP - The author of a new state law that allows felony charges against owners of dangerous dogs was hospitalized over the weekend after his own dog attacked him.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Andreessen: PHP succeeding where Java isn't

I'll drink to that - Java is well, er, inscrutable would be phrasing it nicely, and this from an old C++ weenie. I like OOP, I understand virtual methods and instantiation, but I have never been able to get ahold of Java enough to do anything useful with it.

Netscape pioneer Marc Andreessen says the PHP is better, simpler, and has a brighter future than Java.

(link) [CNET News.com]

00:00 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

Wooing the evangelicals

An interesting historical analysis, but no conclusions were drawn. My own take would be that the Dems need to convince voters that while religion should be valued, injecting it into the political process inevitably leads to somebody's god or commandments getting ignored or even actively opposed by the State apparatus - and sooner or later, if they insist on making God a Republican, He's the one that'll be marginalized.

Democrats are said to have a religion problem. What that really means is that they have a problem connecting with the beliefs and moral values of white evangelical Christians. So what are Democrats to do?

(link) [U.S. News & World Report]

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link