No, two wrongs don't make a right. I was just arguing against the idea that using the service for something other than it's intended purposes, or violating a social contract as the parent said, is the particular reason they'd come after her. It's because she messed with their money.
> Somebody can conceivably receive significant financial damage though. Why they shouldn't be liable?
Not just financial damage, the owners of defective routers can be targets of criminal lawsuits if their connections are used as proxies for attacks, death threats, bank fraud, etc.
Litigation seems too heavy handed for these kinds of attacks.
A major issue here is how your smart toaster or MiVoice box can be spamming the internet and there's no real way to realize it for most people.
Since you pitched a controversial solution, let me make one that's probably even more controversial: maybe bandwidth is too cheap. Maybe the problem would fix itself without legal hell if your C&C'd smart toaster / VoIP box had an impact on your ISP bill instead of being folded into your unlimited bandwidth billing.
I get the feeling the person not using the company approved services will also suffer in a lawsuit. The company is going to take a hit, but I bet the person screwing around will have some personal liability.
Yes, you can, and there's nothing the victim can do about it. Many service providers won't even give you the details of the person who submitted the notice so you can sue them (Google, for example).
What do you think about consumers who complain about their ISP?
Or, should you be able to call the police while you're being robbed if you sued as a victim of police brutality in the past?
The claims seem absurd, but that doesn't mean the plaintiff should be fought using any means possible including outside of court. It sets a terrible precedent, and would apply to plaintiffs you're more likely to agree with.
Really, even Samsung and Apple continue to do business with each other in the midst of suing eachother.
I think there needs to be a certain level of reasonableness when tracing back liability. I mean, why stop at the ISPs? Why not take it all the way up to RIPE for allocating IPs to the company? Or how about the telecommunication companies that used government allocated RF spectrum to facilitate the communications. In that case, the telecoms and the Government(s) themselves should be liable.
As for people wanting to talk to their sweetie without being monitored, I believe authorities have already said people who were using the services for legitimate purposes may request to have their communications excluded from any legal proceedings and naturally, won't be prosecuted just for using the devices.
You could take their customers to small claims court one by one, they'd each be on the hook for the purchase price of their access points. This would go a long way toward generating publicity and forcing compliance.
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