Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Suing a Virus Creator
Message-ID: <2284@looking.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 19:30:31 GMT
References: <456@l5comp.UUCP> <12081@dscatl.UUCP> <16600@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <5331@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Distribution: na
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 26

Is this what people want?  To "deep pocket" Cornell?  Do you want all
universities to go into panic mode (even if the suit fails) and turn
into armed camps?

Do you want source access only given on a "need to know" basis?

Do you want a full security check before somebody can connect their
Sun to the internet?  Or their Xenix system, or their PC?

Suing a graduate student will get you one bankrupt graduate student.
You won't even recover costs.  (Unless this guy is richer than I know.)

You will only get money if you bring in players like Cornell.  And I don't
think you'll like the consequences of what you do.

Also, if I were the judge, and Sun sued because they had the expense of
FedExing (TM, Federal Express) bug fixes out to their customers, I would
not by any stretch of the imagination rule 100% for the plaintiff.

This sort of behaviour has to be crushed, but this is not the way to do it.
The way to do it is to make sure people get caught if they do it.

(I wonder how long it would take to fill up a 300m disk pack keeping an
audit trail of major internet transactions?)
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473