Re: product liability (was: Virus Update)

[owen () dixon delong sj ca us (Owen DeLong)]

As an academic argument, I would like to consider the following:

1.      Given:  M$ released a product which contained "enabling technology"
                which allowed this event to occur.

2.      Given:  This event was a Virus/Worm which used Visual Basic Scripting
                and the Outlook Address Book to duplicate and proliferate
                itself to a large number of systems at a fairly high rate
                of speed.

3.      Given:  Storing and forwarding mail costs money.

3.      Fact:   M$ Has a monopoly position.  (Federal court ruling)

4.      Theorum: Companies and other Entities which provide relay service
                for an organization which falls victim to this event incurred
                costs as a result of the event.

Proof:

Statement                                       Reason
===========================================     ==============================
Storing and Forwarding mail costs money.        Given (3).

Relays store and forward mail.                  Definition of Relay.

The virus generated a large amount of mail      Given (2), nature of email
to be relayed.                                  forwarding.

Entities providing relay service incurred       Given (3) and previous
costs.                                          statements


As such, I would argue that M$ release of a product with such widely known
exploitable vulnerabilities into a the market including customers of any
given relay service entity may, indeed, create standing for that service
entity to sue M$ on the basis of costs incurred due to M$ negligence and
negligent business practices.

Owen