Could a tax prevent software defects?

Author David Rice has a provocative idea--tax software based on the frequency and severity of its security problems. In his new book, Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software, and in an interview with Forbes cited this week, Rice estimates that security flaws in software have an economic cost of some $180 billion year. He argues that taxing products with serious defects will provide an incentive for the software developers to shape up. You would assume that if perfection were that easy, most software would already be free from hacker attacks. Still, you also can never underestimate the creativity of malicious intruders, or account for user errors that cause problems. Rice certainly raises a big concern, but it is hard to imagine how such a tax could actually work in practice. And with the political clout of the industry, it is hard to imagine Congress imposing such a tax. - Judi