Re: Defcon Bill

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Tue, 5 May 1998 11:14:37 -0400 (EDT)


Lloyd Wood writes:
> Send an email to a company. Ask them if they're Y2K compliant, and
> who their suppliers are. Ask their suppliers the same thing.
>
> No-one will dare refuse to answer. Eventually, you'll find information
> that indicates a company isn't compliant, and this information can be
> fed back up the chain to implicate everyone as not being compliant.

Actually, the response you get may well be a crapshoot from all of
them... the problem is that the lawyers won't let you say "yes" (which
opens you up to allegations of fraud if unanticipated problems crop
up), but they won't let you say "no" either (since that would allow
people to sue you *now* for something called "anticipatory breach of
contract" --- i.e., you may be complying with the contract now, but we
believe you won't in the future).

The best solution seems to be some conjugation of "we are doing our
utmost to attempt to deal with the problem but..." --- which, if true,
is the most that anyone can actually be sure of. Remember, if the
power grid goes down and stays down, we all get to worry about threats
a lot more basic than lawsuits...

rst