alt Hacker NewsNot saying this would be the right way to go about preventing undesirable uses, but shouldn't building 'risky' technologies signal some risk to the ones developing them? Safe harbor clauses have long allowed the risks to be externalised onto the user, fostering non-responsibility on the developers behalf.
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How can you know how people are going to use the stuff you make? This is how we end up in a world where a precondition to writing code is having lawyers on staff.
No.
The reason safe harbor clauses externalize risks onto the user is because the user gets the most use (heh) of the software.
No developer is going to accept unbounded risk based on user behavior for a limited reward, especially not if they're working for free.
Just last weekend I developed a faster reed-solomon encoder. I'm looking forward to my jail time when somebody uses it to cheaply and reliably persist bootlegged Disney assets, just because I had the gall to optimize some GF256 math.
No
Foisting the responsibility of the extremely risky transport industry onto the road developers would certainly prevent all undesirable uses of those carriageways. Once they are at last responsible for the risky uses of their technology, like bank robberies and car crashes, the incentive to build these dangerous freeways evaporates.