[Jack Simth]

geoschmo said:
Jack, that was a good post, however, it's not as cut and dried as all that. Gunmakers have in fact been sued, succesfully in some cases. Tobacco companies have been sued. And not just by smokers families, but by people who were affected by second-hand smoke. Automakers have been sued regarding vehicle accidents, which were ultimatly caused by someone breaking a law like speeding or running a red-light, but there may have been some flaw or poor design decision that contributed to the amount of damage from the accident. Drug companies get sued over doctors mis-prescribing their products. And at least some of the families of 9-11 victims considered, not sure if they actully went forward with it, suing the airlines and aiplane maufacturers over what the terrorists did. All of these are examples where a product with legal uses was used illegally or incorrectly by a third party and the manufacturer was held, or was attempted to be held partially liable.

There's a bit of a difference between people getting hurt from misleading advertising, bizarre leagal practices, or defective products and people getting harmed due to 3rd party intent. Of course, we are kinda headed in the direction I was warning about at present already, aren't we?

geoschmo said:
The arguments that get made are whether the manufacturer made a sufficent effort to design the products with safeties to prevent their misuse.(guns, autos) Or if the end Users were given siffucent warning and instruction about how to use them safely and legally. (autos, tobacco) Or wehter the manufacturer participated in irrisponsible margeting practices in order to increase their sales with no thought given to the end result. (gun shows, unlicensed dun dealers, and kick back backs to doctors to increase prescription sales.)

It's kind of difficult to imagine a rope or kitchen knife being made perfectly safe from misuse and still have it be useable for it's primary purpose.

That actually applies to pretty much anything. Nothing in this world is perfectly safe. Hasn't been since The Fall.

geoschmo said: However, if the kitchen manufacturer were marketing knives to kids to drive up sales they'd be dragged into court in a heartbeat.

Guns aren't marketed to kids; neither are knives. Both show up in your standard Saturday Morning Ninja Cartoon (knives more than guns, Last I looked (been a while though)). You can get some guns (only a small percentage of guns are purchased in this manner) with no waiting period or background checks at the comparatively rare gun shows or kinves under similar circumstances at the comparatively common supermarkets, malls, or infomercials (a high percentage of knives are purchased in this manner). Knives are marketed to kids as much as guns are (if not more - ads for knives appear on TV, and kids do watch TV), and are much more readily available.

geoschmo said:And if it was found that the microwave manufacturer hadn't made a reasonable effort to prevent the kind of tampering you described, they could probably expect to get a visit form a lawyer if such a thing were happening very often.

There isn't really much that can be done about it - removeal of (or drilling a few holes in) the casing, one component removed and it's ready to go. Besides, it's effectively untraceable. There is no way to tell how often it's used, unless you want to guess at some percentage of electrical or unknown specific cause fires. Unless the perp starts bragging about how it was done, about the only clues to the cause are the microwave itself (which can be reassembled, or torn apart further and discarded) and perhaps some tire tracks on the street. A car parking for a few minutes on the side of the road isn't suspicious - a lot of people stop and check maps.

geoschmo said:
At this point the Mpaa isn't going after the bit-torrent programmer, but I could very easily see them attempting to do so in the future.

Last paragraph of the second link in this thread (empahsis added):

Precedent leaves the MPAA with little choice but to attack movie-sharers rather than BitTorrent itself. But if next July's anticipated Supreme Court ruling in the MPAA/RIAA vs Grokster/Streamcast goes in favour of the movie and music industries, the heat is going to be on any technology, no matter how benign the intentions of its developer, that nevertheless makes piracy possible. ®

They may not currently be suing the programmers, but they are trying to make it possible.

Honestly, I suspect RIAA (and others) will keep at it until something like what ended the commie trials happens.