Comment by tremon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tremon | Hacker News Reader

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> It is hard for manufacturers to do this with small teams. Mostly because they do not always have good CI/CD or platforms available to keep being on top of vulnerabilities and so on and so forth.

"It is hard for hospitals to keep their ORs clean with small teams. Mostly because they do not always have good cleaning products or procedures available to keep being on top of contaminations and so forth". I do not believe this is a valid argument to protect small firms.

> Not all manufacturers write their own software and often contract it out

Two words: liability chain. This is standard practice in almost every other industry.

I agree with the rest of your points, but I do not think that IP protections should trump regulatory requirements: if a company cannot comply with certain requirements due to contracts with their suppliers, the device should not be allowed on the market.

Liability chain in many industries is a fantastic way to build a large legal moat to prevent competition from small players.

The goal of any regulatory agency must be to ensure as much safety as can be done while preserving the ability of small players to enter the field and compete & while keeping the costs low for consumers. Otherwise, safety becomes a rationale that larger corporations are excellent at spinning to justify more regulatory moats.

A fair point. However, what are we optimizing for? An open/fair market, or consumer safety? Balance is key, but I'm interested in any counter proposals that do a better job.

Consumer safety is long term optimized by having competition. Multi-goal optimization is essential. Try to optimize for just one thing and you’ll quickly go off the rails as a regulator.

> "It is hard for hospitals to keep their ORs clean with small teams...". I do not believe this is a valid argument to protect small firms.

I think your argument here undermines itself. I have not seen an operating room anywhere but a hospital, and hospitals are big. It couldn't really be said that hospitals represent a place with small teams or limited resources. Insurance money is involved, and if you are anywhere other than America, a great deal of government money as well. This is not the picture of a "small firm".

Therefore I must conclude that you either didn't mean to put that hole in the argument, or that you did and that therefore you claim that "small firms" should not create IoT devices.

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