The Ferris Research blog carries a story about a woman in Denver (Colorado) who had a visit from the local Sheriff’s office to forcibly remove her PC. Why? Because Ms Winkler’s PC had been infected and been used to make fradulent purchases online.
This got me thinking. Should we require people to have a licence to own a PC? After all, in the wrong hands it can be used to cause a lot of damage to businesses and reputations, and inflict a lot of inconvenience on the general public if used to distribute spam. Licencing puts PC’s in the same category as cars and guns (in those countries where you can still buy one) which may be overstating it’s capacity to cause actual physical harm, although I’m sure it would hurt a bit if dropped on your head! But requiring a licence may cause people to think twice about leaving it wide open for use as a spam relay or bot.
In reality it isn’t going to happen. For a start it would need to happen world-wide to be effective. But it was an interesting thought 
