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Comment by scohesc | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense that a company that provides an operating system for billions of devices around the world takes some responsibility for any criminal actions taken on others that use said operating systems' potential exploits/bugs to harm other financially/personally/etc... Really cool to see an article written about it though. Makes you think that Microsoft are the good guys :P

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Regardless if size,companies are not law enforcers. MS is also not responisble for the OS it has already sold to customers, that OS is not their property or concern outside of patches (fixing what they broke before sales).

I hate this idea of corporate heroes,next thing they'll let them do offensive operations (hack the hackers without any due process or authority).

Technically MS does own the OS, the end user is just granted a license to use it. They do however not own the hardware it runs on, so there should be limits on what they can do, I agree that the idea that they can act as law enforcement without limits is chilling.

There are limits. The article describes them waiting on a federal court order giving them authority to execute their plan.

I also understand that they control what amounts to a substantial private police force. Which is exactly what government must do, not Microsoft

MS is absolutely responsible for the OS it has sold to customers, I expect them to make updates with security fixes and allow me to opt out of those updates if I want.

This also isn't heroics, but I knew, without a doubt, that people would read this headline and get angry because the government is supposed to be the hero. I'm not going to bother making the case for or against that, history can do it for me.

I'll add that it's absurd to compare them to law enforcement. They do not have any authority of using force here. They did not put hands on nor imprison the people running the botnet.

> MS is also not responsible for the OS it has already sold to customers, that OS is not their property or concern outside of patches

My start-menu search just starting alerting me to all the "rewards points" I'm getting for using it, so this seems wrong to me

Who is the “they” that will let corporate heroes do offensive operations without due process? If it’s the government, wouldn’t the larger risk be that they just skip due process themselves? If it’s the companies, wouldn’t they then be held responsible for breaking the law?

The idea that Microsoft is responsible for what people do with their software has a lot of problems, IMO.

But Microsoft should be trying to ensure their customers have a good experience, and a majority of these botnets's victims will be people with Windows PC's. Ergo, it makes sense for Microsoft to do what it can to give their customers a better experience.

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