BBC fails to understand mens rea

Charles Lindsey ukcrypto at chiark.greenend.org.uk
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:38:54 -0000


On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:50:38 -0000, James Firth <james2@jfirth.net> wrote:

> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> Moreover, an alternative would be to inform the owners of the infected
>> machines, perhaps by overlaying their screensavers as the BBC did. It
>> would be much harder to screw up some simple task like that.
>
> Except where someone had paid for their screensaver or wallpaper then
> alleges that the anti-virus company was responsible for a material loss
> (whereas we all know the computer owner should have backed up, should  
> have
> ensured better anti-malware precautions, yada, yada...)

Sure, but the message on the screensaver could easily say "your original  
screensaver is in file blah, and you should now rename it back to  
anti-blah".

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