blazorthon :
dgingeri :
You sound as if people don't have a choice in what they buy. They have a choice. They can research before buying. They can listen to experts. The problem is that most don't. They're too lazy to bother with it, or intentionally sacrifice security to get what's cheap. What is cheap is cheap because the manufacturers don't put the effort into it. If they were forced to put the effort into it, they'd have to spend more, and therefore charge more. People would hate it because they'd have to spend more money. There would be a lot more people who would just go without any firewall and connect directly to the internet again, and then things would be a lot worse.
Free markets regulate themselves, and people get what they pay for. Stupid and lazy people get bad stuff because they don't put effort into finding the right product, and then they learn and do better later. Without that, they'd never learn, and they'd stay stupid and keep buying crap, and the government would have to keep stepping in for them. That gives more and more power to the elite few and enslaves the rest of us. Keep the government out of it.
In what way does "people choose the more affordable product over the more expensive, yet superior product" translate to "people have no choice in what they buy"?
Yes, they can research routers before they buy. Unfortunately, most people won't understand what makes one router better than another even if they research it unless they pour weeks into learning how to quantify the differences. Furthermore, that has almost nothing to do with the article's purpose which is not about what routers are best, but about getting router companies to be more responsible about issuing effective and rapid updates to fix vulnerabilities as they are discovered. Now they also have to try to figure out which company is more likely to fix these problems in a timely manner.
Even your example of increased costs is false. Fixing the software needs to be done on high end models just as much as cheaper low end models. If they fix a high end model, then they can apply the same fix to a low end model, unless they're using two completely different systems for the two models which is in of itself a waste of time and money. Furthermore, buying a more expensive model doesn't mean you get the security updates that are in question, so the "you get what you pay for" argument doesn't apply anyway.
In no way whatsoever does the government telling these companies that they need to respond to threats to their customers "give more and more power to the elite few and enslave the rest of us." Completely free markets always regulate themselves in favor of exploiting the customer and the situation which the FCC is being asked to respond to is the result of such a free market that is supposedly regulating itself. Yes, too much regulation or improper regulation is bad and causes inefficiency.
However, complete lack of regulation is also bad. What happens if we don't regulate water quality? You end up drinking lead and mercury in your morning coffee. What happens if we don't regulate internet prices? You end up spending exponentially more money for inferior services because you don't have any choice other than garbage for premium prices, especially in rural areas. That's some great self-regulation in action. These are all things that happen right now in the USA. The FCC is trying to fix these problems because the markets will never stop exploiting the people until the markets are forced to do stop the exploitation. The only odd exceptions are things like Google Fiber and that's nowhere near enough to fix things at this point.
1. The way you're pushing government intervention to force companies to put out security patches makes it look like all people have no choice but to buy routers that aren't maintained. Sorry, you're wrong there. There are routers that have software that was written with security in mind, are secure from the start, and are updated fairly regularly. (I bought one, a Cisco RV320. It's expensive at about $160, with no wireless capability, but it is worth the expense to secure my network.) So, yes, people have the choice whether or not to take security as a concern. You're posts are acting as if people have no choice but to buy insecure routers, and that just isn't true.
2. Updating the software on routers costs money. They have to keep programmers around to write new code to correct the security issues that come up. So, it will drive up the cost of the insecure routers, whether they are cheap or expensive from the start. For example, if someone buys a $60 Belkin router or a $200 Belkin router, they're going to get crap security either way, and likely have to reboot the router every few hours, but if they buy a $160 Cisco router, they would have good security, but few extra options. The government forces Belkin to actually secure their software on their routers, then they have to hire the people to do that, which drives up the cost to $160 for the cheap one and $300 for the expensive one. Since Cisco has been securing their software, they don't have to drive up their costs, but they still have fewer features. The Cisco router just doesn't have to be rebooted all the time. People don't bother to think about having to reboot the router all the time and just buy the Belkin. Here's the thing, though. If the government is forcing this, then they have to pass paws or go through bureaucracy all the time to force new security holes to be patched, and that takes months. Also, beign government bureaucracy, they don't bother to actually check if the updates actually fix anything, and we get a whole bunch of firmware updates that just create problems and don't actually make anything secure. On top of that, government has to implement "regulation" for it, which means the companies have to pay for some government bureaucrat to sit around and make sure that the company is complying. That drives up the prices of the routers, from all companies, another $100-200 just to pay for the government regulation. So, new we get the same security from the Cisco routers for $260-360, and improved security from the crappy, unstable Belkin routers for the same price, paying extra money to employ some lazyass to sit around and rubberstamp the security updates that don't do any good.
3. People don't have to go and learn about router security on their own. Those that don't understand security can listen to the experts on the matter, like me. I've been in IT for 18 years. I've researched router security thoroughly. People could actually listen to me. I could tell them to stop buying the crappy $60 routers because they aren't secure, and to secure their information and their internet connection from leeches. I could hook them up with $160 small business routers and $150 small business wireless access points (the only ones without that HUGE blaring security hole known as WPS) and get them properly secured. Will they listen? Well, so far Bulletproof Home Networks (my small business) has had all of 3 customers in 4 months. Not even my family listens to me about it. My older sister is even still using the massively insecure Xfinity wireless router Comcast gave her. If people are going to be stupid, let them be stupid.
4. When has government actually done any good? ALL current regulation is managed by lazyasses who couldn't care less about doing their jobs because they can't be fired. You think your water quality is because of those idiot bureaucrats?? Think again. Half the water in this country has three to four times the fluoride content designated by the government, to the point of causing major side effects in children. Why do you think so many people buy bottled water? (Oddly, bottled water, almost completely unregulated, is far more pure than tap water, which is heavily regulated.) There's high levels of lead, mercury, sulphur, and other dangerous compounds in most water in this country. The bureaucrats don't care. There have been 17 meat recalls for quality problems that aren't even covered by government regulation this year alone. There have also been 3 recalls on meat for things that are covered by government regulation where the regulators and inspectors from the government didn't catch them. In all 3 cases, their internal reports caught the issue, and they voluntarily registered it with the government and started the recall before the government even requested it. In all the government regulation of food, only ONE recall has been caught and instituted by the government regulators in the last TWENTY YEARS. (That was the ConAgra Peanut Butter recall.) In ALL other cases, it was the COMPANY that caught the problem and issued the recall. It has been, for the last 20 years, corporations who have looked out for the safety of their customers FAR more than the lazy government bureaucrats, and it costs us far less.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram