Holding people responsible

Holding people responsible

Posted Sep 8, 2007 2:14 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Holding people responsible by smoogen
Parent article: Software liability laws: a dangerous solution

You could just have stopped at "by setting premium rates." That's what laws like this are about. There's almost always going to be insurance; the question is who buys it.

People like to think there's a morally correct person to charge for an accident, but there isn't. People buy insurance (or self-insure) and pass the cost around to others. A good liability law (or better: contract) is one that assigns liability to the party best able to control it. He works with his insurer to achieve the proper balance between cost of safety and risk of damage.

But the risk is almost always controllable from multiple angles. The user of software can control the risk by using it behind a firewall, or with proper backups, or with encryption, etc. So maybe he's the best one to buy the insurance.

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