Security quotes of the week

It's not difficult to see the path this is likely to head down, and it's bad. A few countries force Google/Facebook to pay these old school publishers. Then, basically everyone else on the web notices this and says "hey, how come they get to link to me for free? Shouldn't they be paying me too?!?" And then, one by one, we'll just hear of every failed and flopped industry demanding free money from the companies that actually innovated. The music industry must be so excited. Book publishing? Absolutely. What about boxed software providers (hi, Microsoft!).

Basically, every industry that failed to adapt and innovate online is likely to go running to government demanding payment. And the very nature of the open internet ceases to exist the way it has for the past three decades. It's a terrible, terrible idea, and it was ridiculous that it went ahead in Australia. But Microsoft is an actual tech company, which should know better, but it's trollish obsession with Google beating Microsoft in the market means it's willing to toss out the open internet if it thinks it will harm Google.

It's shameful and disgusting.

There is no good reason to underspend on security other than to save money — especially when your clients include government agencies around the world and when the technology experts that you pay to advise you are telling you to do more.

As the economics writer Matt Stoller has suggested, cybersecurity is a natural area for a technology company to cut costs because its customers won’t notice unless they are hacked ­– and if they are, they will have already paid for the product. In other words, the risk of a cyberattack can be transferred to the customers. Doesn’t this strategy jeopardize the possibility of long-term, repeat customers? Sure, there’s a danger there –­ but investors are so focused on short-term gains that they’re too often willing to take that risk.

The market loves to reward corporations for risk-taking when those risks are largely borne by other parties, like taxpayers. This is known as “privatizing profits and socializing losses.” Standard examples include companies that are deemed “too big to fail,” which means that society as a whole pays for their bad luck or poor business decisions. When national security is compromised by high-flying technology companies that fob off cybersecurity risks onto their customers, something similar is at work.