On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 17:47, Nicholas Lee wrote:
The thing is, with roads the government controls access. If you dont have a WOF or drivers license. Eventually you go to jail if you wont act as a responsible driver/car owner.
The government can only regulate the roads of the (local) internet via impossing rules on ISPs. There are no public internet cops or traffic wardens, who can pull you over, then take you to jail on the spot.
ISPs own private roads. Its better they regulate it themselves. Lets not give the government another thing to control.
I don't think Ewen was suggesting that we impose further rules/code of practice/whatever in this case on ISP's. We've seen how fruitless/non-useful that has been so far. As is commonly the case, it's all about the ends in this architecture. The question is what can be done to encourage those who are selling/providing potential zombie boxes to try and ensure that those who are receiving them at least try and keep them secure - and if they fail to do this, accept the severe penalty (i.e turned off). Taking the analogy further, WOF are applied to cars. Not roads. People need to recognise if their car loses it's WOF then if they venture on the road, they may get penalised. I suspect the flaw in this plan is that by forcing PC vendors to make sure that users are clued, and boxes are patched is that a lucrative revenue stream ("..please service my b0rked PC..") is removed in the process. So there's no compelling reason as to why the PC vendors should get on board. Not only that, but ensuring users has clue costs the vendors. I realise that the horse has already bolted (the zombies are already out there), and this sort of thing only bears fruit a wee way away, but I don't think there's ever going to be a golden bullet for this stuff, so we've just got to keep shooting the beast with bronze ones. cheers jamie