The software is eating the world, the investor and technologist Marc Andreeseen declared a few years ago, and every time we are seeing it more and more clearly. New products and services depend on new programs, to such an extent that they are often new programs: the key to profits such as home delivery, renting electric vehicles or bicycles or doing home work are applications whose existence is only virtual and residing in spaces rented in the 'Cloud', wherever you are and whatever you want. And not only in the field of private enterprise: public administrations increasingly offer more services via software, and soon they will demand (for the sake of cost savings and efficiency) that we fulfill our obligations to them in this way. All of which would not have to be a problem, but it becomes one when this reality encounters an unexpected obstacle: the laws of protection of intellectual 'property' and the extreme susceptibility of companies to criticism, which combined can get into very serious trouble.
If software is increasingly important for the structure and proper functioning of society, ensuring its correct and safe functioning is increasingly important for society as a whole. If our cities, our appliances and homes or our vehicles depend on the software, the problems that the software may have become our problems. And not only in matters of efficiency, such as ensuring the convenience of being able to rent an electric car when we want, but of security: if the car is going to be driven by a program, the possible defects of that program become a matter of life or death. A breakdown, an incorrect line of code is already assuming (and will increasingly assume) literally the difference between life and death, so that denouncing these potential defects so that they are corrected becomes fundamental.
But as Cory Doctorow explains, companies are using all the resources at their disposal to silence the voices that want to alert of their software problems, including legal resources. This makes the situation much more dangerous, since the researchers who analyze the potential defects of the software are silenced and their discoveries are silenced, so the problems are not solved. The companies threaten to sue and bring to justice anyone whose news and alerts may be a detriment to their products, and this growing trend puts our security at increasing risk.
And if that were not enough, the special status of the software makes it easier for companies to act like that, since it is protected by laws that are different from those that protect physical products. Intellectual 'property' legislation is different from laws that punish theft, because products made of bytes are different from products made of atoms and must be protected in different ways. As a consequence, it is relatively easy to abuse this legislation and use it not for the purpose of avoiding unauthorized copying of programs, but to silence critical voices that denounce the limitations of these same programs. Due to this, this increasingly vital component for the functioning of modern society is less and less analyzed by independent sources in search of defects, problems and threats, which makes the increasing social dependence of this type of society ever more dangerous. elements. We will have to start using other tools, such as legislative changes, to protect the public if companies continue to insist on silencing those who denounce their abuses by using and abusing laws that are not made for that.