Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
Who would you blame if the "Sony Connect Software" does something nasty to your computer?
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I'd hold Sony
responsible for any damage it did, certainly, but that's not quite the same as blaming them for it. In holding them responsible, I'd expect them to make it right, and to take steps to prevent it. If they contracted it from some other company (which they did, in the case of the ConnSoft) then I'd also expect that they would go after whoever delivered the damaging software.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
They WERE distributing pieces of software they did not have rights to distribute. Period.
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By that logic, this forum, MobileRead, is to "blame" for distributing an expired trial version of a commercial application. No one here knew it was so (the only person who did was the one who put the package together and uploaded it), and as soon as we found out about it, we removed it from being downloadable, and explained what was going on. Are we to blame for that? Are you? You're part of the community too.
I think that we took a responsible action, as I would expect of anyone, or any entity, but I don't see that we're to blame for it.
You'll probably point out, so let me pre-agree with you, that the recent situation here at MobileRead and the the less recent one there at Sony are not very similar. We didn't commission and distribute a piece of software, it was voluntarily created and uploaded. We're not a corporation with employees that are notionally supposed to check such things out, they are.
But if the whole corporation of Sony is to directly to blame for the lapse in attentiveness and judgment of a mid-level executive in one of its multiple divisions, then by that logic, everyone who ever posted here at MR is directly to blame for what happened here.
The rest of it, I'm not even trying to speak to, I'm just hoping to highlight the difference in a group or corporation being responsible for something, and being to blame for it.
In that Sony is corporately responsible for what its employees do in its name, yes, they're responsible for the rootkit debacle. However, I'm very reluctant to consider them to blame for it as there is no evidence that they, as a whole, actively participated in or sanctioned the decision.
Just my interpretation, salt to taste as always.