![handle is hein.journals/stantlr2003 and id is 1 raw text is:
_Stanford Technology Law Review
VIRUS EX MACHINA
RES IPSA LOQUITUR
MEIRING DE VILLIERS*
CITE AS: 2003 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 1
I. INTRODUCTION
The global presence, explosive growth and open access of the Internet and modern
communications technology have dramatically increased the vulnerability of a provider or distributor
of software to liability for harm caused by errors, logical flaws and other factors that may cause a
computer system error. These hazards include the threat of malevolent software and rogue
programs, such as computer viruses, that are capable of spreading rapidly and causing widespread
and substantial damage to data and programs.'
A web site controller, for instance, may face liability for a Java applet on her home page which
deletes data on a particular type of browsing computer. The system operator in a workplace who
becomes aware that an internal network is infected with a virus may have a duty to external e-mail
recipients not to spread infected material, either by informing employees, blocking all external e-mail
traffic or including warnings with outgoing e-mail.2 Bulletin boards, which allow downloading and
uploading of software, are particularly vulnerable to computer virus infection due to the sheer
quantity of transactions performed through bulletin board systems.3
* Dept. of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4023, mdv@stanford.edu, (650)
725-8214. Dedicated to My Latin Teachers. Special thanks to the editors of The Stanford Technology Law Review for superb
editing. I am grateful to Ian Ayres, Ed Felten, Peter Glynn, Sy Goodman, Mark Grady, Gregory Grove, Keith Hylton, David
Kaye, Lawrence Lessig, Charles Nesson, Mitchell Polinsky, Robert Rabin, Kevin Soo Hoo, and Robert Weisberg, for useful
comments. I am also pleased to acknowledge valuable feedback and stimulating discussions from participants at the following
conferences: The Fifth Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice, at National
Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan (Dec. 2000), Eleventh Annual Meeting of The American Law and Economics Association,
Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C. (May 2001), The Eleventh Annual Virus Bulletin Conference, Prague,
Czech Republic, (September 2001), and The Center for Internet and Society Seminar, Stanford Law School, (April 2002). Financial
support from the U.S. Department of Defense and the John M. Olin Foundation, at Stanford Law School, is gratefully
acknowledged.
I KEN DUNHAM, BIGELOW'S VIRUS TROUBLESHOOTING POCKET REFERENCE xix-xxiii (2000); Jeffrey 0. Kephart et al.,
Blueprint for a Computer Immune System, IBM THOMAS J. WATSON RES. CENTER REP., available at
http://www.research.ibm.com/anxvirus/SciPapers/Kephart/VB97/ (There is legitimate concern that, within the next few years,
the Internet will provide a fertile medium for new breeds of computer viruses capable of spreading orders of magnitude faster than
today's viruses... [T]he explosive growth of the Internet and the rapid emergence of applications that disregard the traditional
boundaries between computers threaten to increase the global spread rate of computer viruses by several orders of magnitude.);
PHILIP FITES ET AL., THE COMPUTER VIRUS CRISIS 21 (2d ed. 1992); Carey Nachenberg, Future Imperct, VIRUS BULL. (1997)
(With the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, new viruses can be made widely accessible within minutes.).
2 CLIVE GRINGRAS, THE LAWS OF THE INTERNET 61-62 (1997), 61, 62. An English court held that a defendant who stored
biological viruses had a duty to cattle owners who would be affected by the spread of the virus. Weller and Co. v. Foot and Mouth
Disease Research Institute [1965] 3 All ER 560, at 570. [[T]he defendant's duty to take care to avoid the escape of the virus was
due to the foreseeable fact that the virus might infect cattle in the neighborhood and cause them to die. The duty is accordingly
owed to the owners of cattle in the neighborhood ... .
3 FITES, supra note 1, at 60.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/stantlr2003&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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