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General Public Realizes KaZaa is Spyware
blankmange writes "CNet is reporting the slow dawning of the general public to KaZaa and spyware. "Virginia Watson unwittingly authorized a company she'd never heard of to install software that would help turn her computer into part of a brand-new network. The software, from Brilliant Digital Entertainment, came with the popular Kazaa file-swapping program. But the 65-year-old Massachusetts resident--who has a law degree--didn't read Kazaa's 2,644-word "terms of service" contract, which stated that Brilliant might tap the "unused computing power and storage space" of Watson's computer. " " Fortunately the helpful
graph in the article compares the complexity of IRS tax forms with Brilliant's
terms of use... guess which one is harder to read?
He got a new computer, got all excited about Morpheus and then they switched. Since then he hasn't been able to get anything to start downloading. So he was telling me he was going to install this Kaaza thing and try it, and asked me if I'd heard of it.
As I explained some of the functionality surplus to him, you could see his jaw just dropping and dropping.
But I betcha he'll still install it - cause he loves the CD burner he has and how easy it is to burn MP3's-> CDDA.
It only goes to show that you should read everything before you sign it. This is similar to discovering on your car lease that the company reserves the right to use the car when you aren't.
I've always wondered if the "click if you agree" thing is enough. I remember learning once in my highschool law class that when it came to contracts etc, both parties had to fully understand the extent of the wording - in order to protect people from "fine print" trickery.
It would seem to me that these over-complicated EULAs are an attempt to either confuse users, or get them to click "Agree" without understanding the terms.
If I "trick" you into signing something, you should still be legally protected. Granted of course that you can afford to take it to court.
But that's what class action suits are for right?
IADNAL (D==Definitely)
I'm so glad these guys are getting pounded for this. It's pretty amazing how many news outlets picked up on this story. Unfortunately, there are many many more situations like this that are overlooked.
I really don't have a problem with companies adding extra programs into their software. The problem I have is 1) Not being told about it and 2) Not being given the option of opting out or not installing it.
As far as I'm concerned, a license is not an appropriate place to inform the user of third party software coming along for the ride. Software should be very explicit during install exactly what's happening. That way, the user can either not install the program, or if allowed, not install that component. What's so hard about that?
The fact that these companies try to hide this stuff shows they know the systems are a bit shady.
Strangely enough, this happens with big-time commercial software as well. I was pretty p*ssed when Intuit's TurboTax installed Internet Explorer on my laptop without asking. It just told me, "Installing IE 5.5 now" with no cancel button. I had 5.0 installed and it was there for a reason. Oh, well.
Hopefully, awareness of these practices will hurt companies who will entually find it beneficial to be up front with their customers!
Part of my job is to configure students machines for use on a dorm network. Very often we get complaints about service ranging from no connectivity to slow performance. Of course the slowness can be directly attributed to P2P apps and their tendency to hog bandwidth, but Gator and its ilk are notorious in our circles as poorly written programs that not only do all the privacy violation, etc that they should be reviled for, they also have the unique ability to mung Winsock on machines running ME, 98 and 2000. The fix requires a young priest and old priest and a silver sword (read: edit the registry and rebuild the TCP/IP stack). So now when I get a machine with Gator, etc. I edit the system startup to shut it down. Invariably the performance of the machine and its network connectivity rebounds. I don't ask permission to do this as we are not removing the program, but simply preventing having the prolematic software do what it does -- start.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I wonder if anyone has reverse-engineered BDE's protocols yet? It would be a damn shame, wouldn't it, if their surreptiously installed thiefware should inadvertantly retrieve data containing a destructive worm as a payload, or if their computations were all skewed just enough to still be plausible, but uselessly wrong, or if the client on some computer that their server connected to wasn't quite the client they originally installed, and had unfortunate effects on said server....
Eavesdroppers can't complain if what they hear is unflattering, and thieves can't complain if the stuff they stole is dangerous to them.
---dragoness