Blackmail / Re: e$: Skins vs. Shirts

Tim May wrote:
> At 1:26 AM -0700 6/15/97, Tom Weinstein wrote:
> 
> >Just to be clear, we didn't give the blackmailer any money.  As Mike
> >Homer put it: "We don't bargain with terrorists."

> (What the Danes offered was a straight buiness deal, albeit made weirder
> and more frantic by the constraints of time, publicity, and worldwide
> attention. Still a business deal, though. When Collabra wanted X dollars to
> be acquired by Netscape, was this also "terrorism"? The term "terrorist"
> hardly applies in business deals.)

  As Tim almost points out, people who use their own time, resources
and money to examine your product and discover weaknesses in it which
can be corrected in order to make it a better product hardly qualify
as blackmailers (unless a company considers that their in-house QA
staff is "blackmailing" them to receive a salary).

  (Pay attention, Netscape--major CLUE coming up...)
  It is not the consumer or user's job to keep track of what the
company who produces the software deems to be "proper" use of the
product they have bought. Likewise, it is not the job of computer
analysts and researchers to search out the flaws in a profitable
software and give away their knowledge so that the producer of
the software can maintain or increase their profits.
  If the people who discovered the flaw had wanted they could have
chosen to sell their knowledge to Microsoft for probably a very
substantial sum. 
  Can you imagine the embarassing position Netscape would be in
if Bill Gates made a press announcement about the Netscape flaw
and informed the public that a "Netscape fix" was available at
microsoft.com?

TruthMonger

An anonymous correspondant writes about the recent Netscape bug:
>
>  If the people who discovered the flaw had wanted they could have
>chosen to sell their knowledge to Microsoft for probably a very
>substantial sum.
>

I would respectfully maintain that reputable companies (including
Microsoft) do not work this way. If you tell me about a bug in
a Microsoft product, I'll pass it on to Microsoft immediately;
and I know, from personal experience, that Microsoft employees
work in the same way.

Martin Minow
Apple Computer Inc.