The analogy being that if you drive your car recklessly and cause thousands of dollars of damage you are responsible for it (lets assume nobody dies for the sake of arguemnt) but if you use the internet recklessly and cause millions of dollars of damamges (downtime, lost busineess etc) you are not held responsible and are considered a ‘victim’.

I would like to hear comments from others. Just to clarify this is not a “who issues the licenses question of govt. vs. pvt sector” but of the principle of whether internet users should be held responsible for their actions (even if not intentionally destructive) but if you ‘accidently’ run somebody over with your car - you are still held responsible for negligence - it is the difference between manslaughter and murder in the 1st degree.

The same with computer users. If you are stupid enough not to install a firewall, do not posess anti-virus software and blatantly click on attachments you should be held equally responsible for the millions of $$ of damage you have caused others. The concept of criminal negligence is not new - if a doctor give you the wrong injection even by mistake he is guilty so why not computer users.

And it has just occurred to me that we also need a provision for surprise checks by inspectors who will inspect kitchens to see if anyone other than those licensed to do so is switching on the gas stove.

There are a few software packages out there (or mostly just one, depending on your perspective) that are responsible for enabling users to do such damage.

So how about this: we make software developers responsible for their products? I maintain that if by merely clicking on an email attachment, it is possible to spread worms, then it is not the inept user that is at fault, but inept software.

Licensing just paves the way for a closed user group, because then the net would be only be for the techie, by the techie and of the techie, as it was pre Mosaic and WWW. Maybe.. just maybe, the reason that M$Win has been so susccesful is because it has specifically tried to ‘dumbdown’ its product so that ’stupid’ people can use it.

There is a tremendous positive externality that these mortal users of the Internet exert on all the techie users, the fact that they are willing to buy and use computers has led to a real revolution in the way that our society functions and the full import of this has still to be fully felt or even realised. A small example is the way the cost of internet access has spiralled down in the last five years. Licenses would mean higher costs for the license holders both to procure the license adn then the access to the service, which may make even more bussinesses unviable. The fact that so many people continue to use the Internet *despite* spam and worms, implies that at some level the positive externality of the stupid guys outewighs the negative externality that they exert.

The problem with the proposal is obvious, all techies would pretend to be non-techies and that would be the end of that. Maybe then you could only require Engineers, Comp. Science Majors and IQ 130+ people to get a license? After all they are the guys most likely to make harmful viruses and spam-filter workarounds…

All we need is this Internet Licensing Authority, and the possibilities would be endless, today the internet tommorow the world ;-).

When driving a car or using the internet, it is no longer just about the rights of the individual but of the entire community which interacts with the individual and could be place in harms way because of his actions.

So you are mistaken if you think licensing paves teh way for a closed user group - driving tests and licensing requirements are stricter than ever- Police and DMV database are fully linked up but the no. of car driver’s hasn’t gone down over the years - it has increased exponentially.

Currently the effect of worms are limited to dDOS attacks and a geneal slowing down but it is only a matter of time before it starts affecting the economy and our lives in much more serious ways. There is already specudlation that part of the reason why the entire eastern US expereinced a black out was dur to the DOS caused by worms. More and more citical services are using the internet and its not unrealistic to assumet that Granny caused a nuclear reactor o melt down because she couldn’t be bothered to install a virus checker. License her and she’ll be far more likely to get the latest patches becuase she know that if she cause a problem - they will catch her and hold her responsible.

If someone tampers with your car while it is parked on a street corner, and you don’t know about it. You come back and continue to drive, without knowing that your brake is not working, and when you come upto a signal, your car refuses to stop, you regretably run over a few people, but was it your fault? The chap who tampered with your car, is near by and derives a distinct pleasure from seeing those people mowed down. If you are jailed, will that stop that guy from doing something like this again? What would be his motivation? Compassion?

Incidentally your suggestion is exactly what the RIAA is trying through its scare tactics of arresting 70 year old grandparents for their grandchildren’s Kazaa downloads. The problem with internet music is not with the customers, as Steve Jobs has smashigly demonstrated with iTunes. It is with the companies that don’t want to cut prices to adjust to a new market.

With regard to the viruses again, the problem is not the people with unprotected computers, it is with the standards and practices upon which the network has been built. SMTP and POP3 are pretty old standards developed when the Internet was still a techie domain, I think I read about some suggestions for them to be updated and made more secure. The vigilance has to be on the part of the System Security Professionals that these companies hire, not the users. After all those guys are paid to fix such problems, users are just there to buy the product.