8/25/01 3:19:31 PM, "Franklin, Joel" wrote: >Note also that the line is the distinction of SELF-defense and >PROPERTY-defense. >This thread began as a discussion of what you could do if someone attacked >your computer. You're allowed to kill to protect yourself, but generally not >your property. This varies from state to state. And in that context, nobody's talking about killing a =person= to protect property (eg a computer). In this case, they're talking about killing one computer to protect another. If a person is justified in shooting in self-defense someone who's trying to kill him, then is a computer justified in sending a fatal packet to another computer that just fired a malicious packet at it? When you apply The Line between defense and retaliation, it would only be justified if the "defender" is in reasonable fear for his life (or the life of someone else he's defending). Does that apply here? I don't know. We are very close to The Line, but I really don't know for sure which side we're on when we send out passive worms that can only kill a Code Red II- infected box (or so we think - we don't really know for sure that no other machine could be killed).