MyDoom seeks to destroy antivirus firms

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Re: Jeff

No dude. However, if she kept walking through dark alleys in bad neighborhoods at four in the morning, she is being openly irresponsible. If she stayed in open lit areas during reasonable hours of the day, she could wear whatever she wants and she would be safe.

Now, tell me.. how is this different than computer use? Substitute "dark alleys in bad neighborhoods" with "opening e-mail attachments", and we've got the same thing. And even "staying in open lit areas during reasonable hours" doesn't make her safe, only *safer*. Analagous to a computer user who runs anti-virus, spyware detection, etc. (and wearing whatever she wants could be analagous to using which ever OS you want ;p )

To assume that all online evil should be abolished just because of these unsuspecting people is asking for a fantasy world. Surely we don't expect all pimps, drug dealers, rapists, and gang members to be wiped off the face of the earth just so Suzie can wear a miniskirt through a Harlem back alley at four in the morning.

Of course, it's nearly impossible to eliminate all evil.. but isn't that what we should be striving for?

You are falling into the classic "religious" perspective which thinks that if someone even thinks of something evil, then they are evil

And you are falling into the classic "blame the victim" perspective..

However, if I actually DO these things then that is evil, for I intended to do these things. See the difference now? :)

So.. writing and distributing a virus should not be illegal...why? They ARE performing the act and it IS evil.

The difference being, you have control and oversight as to when you connect the box to the Net

Just as you have control and oversight as to where you park your motorcycle?

No, for the reason I explained above. Let's say I work for Symantec and I am creating a virus (or using one already in existence) that I want to use to purposely infect a system so I can learn about the nature of how a virus works. You're saying this is a criminal act? Where's the crime? Who got hurt? Who lost money?

If you're infecting YOUR OWN computer, and ONLY your computer.. then there is no crime. But this is definately NOT the case for the MyDoom writers you seem to be sticking up for..

>> And no home user needs a 200Gig drive. I don't know anyone that has more than an 80 or 100, which is already overkill. And if someone is filling up a drive that large, they are obviously more than a Joe Sixpack, and thus know to some extent what they are doing. <<

You don't need a hell of a lot of technical knowledge to, say, use a TV tuner card.. And that does eat up space *rather quickly*. So a Joe Sixpack could very well fill up a 200GB hard drive..

Again, backup and redundancy are the solutions to what you described, and this is old hat. Any lawyer dealing with important data like that should definitely have some kind of real admin on his staff, and if he doesn't, that is his fault, not some fart lard writing cyberdeath in mom's cellar.

Let's say he's accessing legal information on a website, and that site goes down because of a DOS attack. Same result, and you can't blame the lawyer..

Even if some extraordinary circumstance happened like that, they'd obviously put a hold on the execution if they thought they mnight be able to prove innocence, no? C'mon!

Not likely..

Posted by: d_jedi   Posted on: 10/19/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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