Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation [LWN.net]

Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation

Posted Jan 1, 2012 22:01 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)
In reply to: Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation by ibukanov
Parent article: Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation

how do you define what an acceptable level of being locked down is?

the light switches that you are talking about were never intended to be general purpose devices, and arguably are not. but it's impossible to create a remote control switch and then make it impossible for it to be abused.

If you want a disclaimer on products that they may be used for something else and the manufacturer bears now responsibility for the product being abused, all that you will achieve is the addition of one more paragraph of fine print in the product documentation (and are you really sure there isn't such a statement in the product documentation now?)

this is like the California Law that requires that all buildings that contain potential Cancer causing chemicals to have a sign on the doors stating "this building contains chemicals known to cause cancer", every building I have seen contains such a statement, so it's completely worthless

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Doctorow: The coming war on general-purpose computation

Posted Jan 1, 2012 22:33 UTC (Sun) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

> how do you define what an acceptable level of being locked down is?

I do not want to define any such level. But I do want the manufacturer to bear the full responsibility if the device can be hacked remotely and used beyond its stated area of operation. The manufacturer should not be able to waive that responsibility using a trick like of calling a device a general purpose computer that happened to be able to turn life on/off if such devices is marketed as a specialized device.

> (and are you really sure there isn't such a statement in the product documentation now?)

Not in a wireless light switches that are sold here in Norway.

> the California Law that requires that all buildings that contain potential Cancer causing chemicals to have a sign on the doors stating

Those laws are useless indeed. What may work is a law that states that if a building uses materials that have not been on the marked for, say, 50 years, then the builder should be responsible for any health-related problems that they may have caused.