Should users and consumers pay for computer health the way people pay for healthcare?
Check out the firestorm of comments on the story Microsoft’s Charney suggests ‘Net tax to clean computers. Speaking at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, Scott Charney, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing said that we needed “social programs” to address computer health, similar to the healthcare system’s quarantine. And who would foot the bill? How about the general public via a usage tax on the Internet?
As you might expect, Network World readers are not amused at the idea. Here are a few of the more choice responses:
Why not have Microsoft make better software. Then we can avoid all the viruses in the first place.
How many mac and linux machines are caught up in these botnets? Zero! Good luck with that.
The audacity of Microsoft is really quite stunning. They should pay the full freight for problems they created. Not the people that bought their stuff and not the people that avoid their stuff.
Add another checkbox on the tax form that will allow the taxpayer to donate $10 to Microsoft to fight malware. Most of use will just get a chuckle out of that. But there are enough obliviots that Microsoft should be able to raise a good chunk of change!
I don’t agree about the tax charge… But we are responsible for what we install on our computers, just like we have to responsible when we drive our cars, or do we let any person drive for us?People just need to stop downloading everything they see online or are told to download…. Linux and the others have vulnerability too… just not exploited, but they will.
How about some court precedents to throw away the ridiculous “end user license agreement” that makes you responsible for all of Microsoft’s software flaws? How about a legal requirement for a warning label on software packages that would state “USE AT YOUR OWN RISK” or perhaps “RUNNING MICROSOFT SOFTWARE CAN LEAD TO COMPROMISE OF YOUR INFORMATION”! I would suggest a hackability rating so the consumer will realize that they are much more likely to be compromised if they use this or that OS…
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