The Effect of Liability and Patch Release on Software Security: The Monopoly Case

An abundance of flawed software has been identified as the main cause of the poor security of computer networks because major viruses and worms exploit the vulnerabilities of such software. As an incentive mechanism for software security quality improvement, software liability has been intensely discussed among both academics and practitioners for a long time. An alternative approach to managing software security is patch release, which has been widely adopted in practice. In this paper, we examine these two different ways of mitigating customer risk in the software market: liability and patch release. We study the impact of both mechanisms on a monopolistic software vendor's decision on security quality. We find the conditions under which each mechanism is effective in terms of improving security quality and increasing social surplus. The heterogeneous nature of loss is identified to be a key factor for the effectiveness of the liability mechanism. On the other hand, patch release can be effective and welfare‐enhancing regardless of the nature of loss as long as customers incur low patching cost, and/or the vendor incurs low patch development cost. We also examine the impact of customer misperception of the outcome from vulnerable software on the effectiveness of liability.     

社交平台自我优待反垄断规制研究

不同于欧美科技平台以纵向发展为主,我国诸多平台以横向发展和构建平台生态系统为表征,超级平台之间以对外平台封禁和对内自我优待构成数字经济反垄断的基本样态.当前,我国反垄断法多着眼于平台间彼此封禁的研究,忽略了社交生态系统自我优待对整体市场竞争的抑制.自我优待多体现为具有支配地位的网络平台在纵向市场内所实施的具有封锁效果的行为.以投入品封锁、客户封锁为视角,分析了自我优待的不同封锁类型.已形成社交生态系统的超级平台实施自我优待行为导致平台间相互割据,迫使中小企业依附于"大型数字帝国",损害了消费者福利,扰乱了竞争秩序.针对超级平台自我优待的规制路径,竞争政策与政府管制各有其规制的特点,竞争政策应更侧重于采取预防性措施.政府规制具有举证责任减轻、破坏性小等优势,并为企业行为提供了更加明确的指导,协调两者之间的关系是未来需要进一步探索与实践的方向.