Liability is fraud

In fact it's a cornerstone of a successfull capitalist society. Some people like to take that all the way and say that self regulation is quite superior to government regulation, but I don't take it that far. I figure the best solution depends heavily on the situation and only in a tiny minority of cases is government regulation justified.

There is quite a bit difference though from the standpoint of a company being liable for creating buggy software versus a company being liable for purposely creating buggy software to cut costs.

If, for instance, Microsoft produces a server that has a bug and that bug gets used to compromize a system, but Microsoft did release a bug fix in a resonable amount of time... then that is not Microsoft's fault.

However if Microsoft works specificly to obsifgate the problem and attempt to silence people trying to educate the public on problems... and that causes admins who are otherwise diligent to have vunerable servers that causes a data loss.. Then Microsoft is VERY liable.

Same thing with Open source companies, or any other software company.

In other words:

If a company produces bad code, then that's natural and people are able to regulate that company without any need for government. They can use public data produced by business/orginizations that monitor this sort of thing (example: Open source vunerability database, or Secunia) and educate themsevles. If a business consistantly produces bad code, then that business is going to go out of business. No need for government intervention.

However if that same company attempts to subvert the public's ability to regulate by doing things like lying about vunerabilities and attempting to hide the truth from people... as well as actively making it very difficult for people to fix the problem themselves, or discover the problem themselves, or replacing the bad software they produce with good software other people produce.... Then I absolutely seeing this becoming a issue for civil lawsuits.

It's true the insurance-companies probably take a big thick profit, but there's still *some* competition in the insurance-business, so it's probably fair to assume that the real risk is in the 50-75% of what the premiums would indicate.

Which is, frankly, ridicolous.

There are several kinds of mistakes;

• It *was* in actual fact a mistake, but given the information available at the time the decision had to be made, it was not possible at that point to see that the decision was bad. This is the most common type of mistake. (you decide to drive to work, the brakes are faulty. However you didn't *know* that they where faulty, and had no clear indications this was so)
• It was in actual fact a mistake, but given the information available at the time the decision had to be made, it was perfectly understandable. It migth not have been the optimum choice, but it's the sort of mistake anyone will do sometimes. People are human. Humans err. (you decide to drive to work, the car has been pulling sligthly to the left when braking hard lately, you however decide it's probably a detail which can safely be left until the next routine-check-up in 2 months.)
• It was a mistake, and it wouldn't have happened if the person responsible had been paying attention. (you decide to drive to work without a seatbelt on.)
• It was a mistake, and it wouldn't have happened if the person responsible hadn't been behaving recklessly. (you just had half a bottle of vodka, but decide to drive back home anyway since it's freaking cold.)

It seems sometimes that large sums are paid in the US for mistakes that atleast appear to be of the first or second type. I ain't just talking of medical malpractice either, the above applies to tort in general.

In most of europe, there's not a cent to be had in situation 1. In situation 2 damages are limited to actual direct damages (not a cent for "emotional suffering" or similar)