Virus

“Necessary actions taken in the name of virus protection has always been controversial. My client concedes that.

“Indeed, my client is also willing to concede that their actions to close down the viral botnet in question were insufficient, and indeed that while they did not – and do not – agree with many of the actions taken against them, those actions were probably justifiable for the actors in question: traffic deprioritization, network filtering, link shutdowns, route blackholing, even the documented network intrusions, and will seek no redress for these.

“My client does, however, maintain that k-rodding their network operations center from orbit went well beyond any possible definition of reasonable response!”

* * *

“Even after all the actions which the plaintiff has obligingly conceded as justified, the botnet infecting their clients’ networks that they appeared unwilling or unable to deal with was still generating and propagating over secondary routes over one hundred million pieces of spam per second. Per second. You don’t need me to tell you the sort of extranet pollution that represents. You don’t need me to tell you the sort of time-cost that that imposes on extranet users and virtual citizens across the galaxy, or what it’s reasonable to do in light of that. But, evidently, I need you to tell these guys that.”

– Tifrelle Telecommunicants v. Murek’s Marauders and Union of Concerned Infomorphs,
Central Conclave Court