[NTLUG:Discuss] IP idemnification - a concern?

[Peter A. Koren]

On Sun, 2005-07-10 at 22:40 -0700, Steve Baker wrote:
> Overall, the industry doesn't need indemnity insurance.  It's a
> zero-sum game - except that the insurance companies will take their
> cut.
> 
> Just look what happened to the Medical profession.  Everyone who
> might even remotely get sued takes out malpractice insurance.  Hence,
> there is far less deterrance against malpractice.  Patients who are
> victims get lots of compensation - but at the cost of jacking up
> health care costs.  Since the insurance companies make profits on
> malpractice insurance, the average payout per patient is less than
> the average cost per patient.   It would be better to allow each
> person to take out insurance against something bad happening to them
> at a level they regard as good risk.
> 
> Worse still is the situation in some branches of medicine where Doctors
> simply cannot afford malpractice insurance - and they leave the profession.
> 
> The same thing would happen to software indemnification.  We're better
> off writing license clauses that say "we take no responsibility" so
> we can sell software more cheaply (or give it away) than we are having
> victims of bad software claim damages.
> 
> So long as this is the standard practice in the industry, everyone
> will accept it - just as they have done for 40 years.  However, if
> enough people start offering indemnity - that could start to become
> the norm - customers and the courts will start to claim damages
> whenever software has a bug - which (since *ALL* software of any
> complexity has bugs) would mean the end of OpenSource and the end
> of most small companies.
> 
> Big companies (Microsoft, IBM, etc) can act as their own insurers.
> The smaller companies cannot.  That means that some proportion of
> their income is turning into insurance company profits - and on
> the average they'll be less economic than the big guys as a result.
> 
> Just say no.

I agree Steve. The short take on this is that the lawyers have turned
the tort system into a gigantic extortion racket. They are truly
parasites, like tape worms, feeding off the productive forces of society
and are doing massive economic and societal damage. This is America's
biggest form of corruption. The shysters have to be stopped.

-- Pete