Why MyDoom is bad for us all

Predictably the MyDoom virus succeded in taking out the SCO web site. Really there wasn't much chance of it failing. While entertaining half a grin that SCO got what it asked for with its agressive "guilty until proven innocent" case against Linux, I can see the writing on the wall for some far more unpleasent repercussions that will affect all of us.

What I forsee is that sooner or later a group of very powerful corporations will start lobbying the government to make it illegal to attach a computer to the internet if it doesn't have some government controlled anti-virus, anti-network attack software installed on it. The government will cease it as an opportunity to push such a thing through under the guise of a national security and anti-terrorist measure.

The major desktop OS manufacturer will also see it as a worthy cause to support as it will be a huge blow to the fiercely independent open source movement which would never endorse such a measure. It will also be an excellent way for it to segway the entire user base of Windows to its new Longhorn version . My understanding is that this ability of Longhorn to leverage hardware and kernel level protection to prevent your system from using non-copyright protected content and unlicensed content, which includes actualy code, will be an excellent way to prevent it from also unintentionally running virus, worm and other malfesant code. Hence Longhorn can be offered up as the answer to all the governments problems with "terrorist threats" to the internet and all systems connected to it.

Personally I think that's the wrong way to go about it. Clearly the ease with which the MyDoom virus, and others like it propogate, and the ease with which it can bring down any website at will is a big problem. However the Internet and Open Source community has had a long history of addressing such infrastructure problems. Someone should be dropping the task of finding a solution in the laps of the Internet engineering task force rather than rely on proprietary and ad-hoc solutions being impossed on all internet users from "above".