Not Insurance, Liability [LWN.net]

Not Insurance, Liability

Posted Oct 20, 2017 13:45 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
In reply to: Not Insurance, Liability by kh
Parent article: KRACK, ROCA, and device insecurity

Liability is useless if the company goes bankrupt. And bankruptcy is an often used way to get out of liability that even bigger companies use - put the liability on a small subsidiary, and done.

So it would help, a bit, against Microsoft and other large companies, though THEY of course can extend court cases far beyond what a small business or home user could sustain - again leaving those without recourse.

Last but not least, it is becoming common practice to put enforced arbitrage in contracts and unless the courts step up against that (most don't) this kills any serious liability risks.

I don't disagree that adding liability to software is a good idea. I just don't think it solves all problems ;-)

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Not Insurance, Liability

Posted Oct 22, 2017 1:29 UTC (Sun) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, but that's just because the way the law is structured, you can avoid all kinds of personal responsibility by incorporating. The solution would be personal liability, not corporate liability.

Not Insurance, Liability

Posted Dec 14, 2017 0:46 UTC (Thu) by immibis (subscriber, #105511) [Link] (1 responses)

That's dangerous territory too.

Personal liability means that, if the damages work out to many hundreds of thousands of dollars, the government can take away my house to pay them. Under those conditions you'll find a lot less people willing to release software. Or the price will massively increase to cover the required insurance. Free software would not be a thing either.

Not Insurance, Liability

Posted Dec 14, 2017 15:51 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> Personal liability means that ... you'll find a lot less people willing to release software ... Free software would not be a thing

There would have to be standards and licencing, so that there would be clear expectations on _both_ sides of what is acceptable practice, but if you are responsible for causing someone harm is it really a bad thing to have liability for your actions. The devils are in the details though because nothing is without boundaries, you can't have infinite liability and the user has some responsibility to use the tools properly, just like in Civil Engineering practice. Free software may not be impossible in that environment but it depends on the exact rules and policies which make that environment happen.

Not Insurance, Liability

Posted Oct 26, 2017 8:35 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> Last but not least, it is becoming common practice to put enforced arbitrage in contracts and unless the courts step up against that (most don't) this kills any serious liability risks.

In the UK (and Europe) this is one-sided :-) The company *must* abide by the arbitrage, unless the customer decides to sue instead. (And we've also got "unfair terms and conditions" so if the arbitrager or Judge thinks the arbitrage is loaded in favour of the company they can just ignore the contract ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol