Legislative proposal sent to my Congressman

Tue Oct 4 16:07:01 UTC 2016

(Interesting and inarguably well-intentioned, and possibly even sound, idea snipped, but noted.)

There are a handful of reasons that this will never happen (well, I'm 98% certain it will never happen, nothing is every 100% sure when it comes to the law, and legislation)... among them the manufacturer's lobby is much more well-girded than is the   'home internet security' lobby;  the cyber-security concerns of the Federal government are focussed on other things (whether they should be or not, they are);  and for the most part legislators are still fairly unsavvy about tech in general, and these things make their eyes glaze over.

That said, there are already tort (negligence, etc.) laws and precedents under which such manufacturers can be sued, along with things like breach of contract between the manufacturer and consumer, and breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose and breach of implied warranty of merchantability.

A couple of winning lawsuits against manufacturers under these laws and theories - which judges *already understand* - is, I think, not only a more likely, but a much faster, route to industry reform.

All that said, much of this faces the same issues that spam lawsuits faced - the people who care the most about it are not the ones who can afford to finance such lawsuits.

Anne

Anne P. Mitchell, 
Attorney at Law
Legislative Consultant
CEO/President, Institute for Social Internet Public Policy
Member, Cal. Bar Cyberspace Law Committee
Member, Colorado Cyber Committee
Member, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop Committee
Author: Section 6 of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (the Federal anti-spam law)
Ret. Professor of Law, Lincoln Law School of San Jose
Ret. Chair, Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop