Ex-Hacker: If You Get Hacked, Sue Somebody by Frank Konkel.
From the post:
Jeff Moss, the hacker formerly known as Dark Tangent and founder of Black Hat and DEFCON computer security conferences, has a message for the Beltway tech community: If you get owned, sue somebody.
Sue the hackers, the botnet operators that affect your business or the company that developed insecure software that let attackers in, Moss said. The days of software companies having built-in legal “liability protections” are about to come to an end, he argued.
“When the Internet-connected toaster burns down the kitchen, someone is going to get sued,” said Moss, speaking Wednesday at the QTS Information Security and Compliance Forum in Washington, D.C. “The software industry is the only industry with liability protection. Nobody else has liability protection for some weird reason. Do you think that is going to last forever?”
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Some customer and their law firm will be the first ones to tag a major software company for damages.
Will that be your company/lawyers?
The only way to dispel the aura invulnerability from around software companies is by repeated assaults by people damaged by their negligence.
Tort (think liability for civil damages) law has a long and complex history. A history that would not have developed had injured people been content to simply be injured with no compensation.
On torts in general, see: Elements of Torts in the USA by Robert B. Standler.
I tried to find an online casebook that had edited versions of some of the more amusing cases from tort history but to no avail.
You would be very surprised at what conduct has been shielded from legal liability over the years. But times do change and sometimes in favor of the injured party.
If you want to donate a used tort casebook, I’ll post examples of changing liability as encouragement for suits against software vendors. Stripped of all the legalese, facts of cases can be quite amusing/outraging.