Even you can be hacked

Thu Jun 10 21:32:14 UTC 2004

Your contract with the water company is for them to deliver you water.
They make a best effort to do just that, but, inherently, there's stuff
besides dihydrogen-oxide in your water.  In most parts of the US, for
the most part, the other stuff isn't significant and nobody worries about
it.  However, if you have a broken toilet that leaks, there is not a single
water company on the planet that will forgive your bill for the water that
leaked through it.

On the other hand, generally, your contract with your ISP says that you
expect them to deliver packets destined for your IP address to your system
and that you expect them to accept packets from your computer system and
deliver them to the rest of the internet.  You've contracted for the 
internet,
not for water.  The internet contains worms, viruses, hackers, spammers, and
the like.  It is well known, and, expected behavior of the internet.
You have not contracted your ISP to run your system for you.  You have
contracted them to deliver packets.  In the scenario described, the
"victim" was a victim of his own actions.  The ISP was generous in
forgiving his bill(s) at first, but, he chose not to fix the toilet.
He could have fixed the toilet at any time and yet, for months, he
chose not to.  Why should the ISP pay the costs incurred because he
chose to continue to run a system he knew was infected and chose not
to fix?

Owen
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20040610/7774e16a/attachment.sig>