Bonzi Class Action Suit Settled: No Foolin'!

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:57AM from the not-even-a-slap-on-the-wrist dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article in the Toronto Star, a class action suit against Bonzi Software has reached a settlement. Bonzi will not pay damages but will be required to stop using fake user interface (FUI) style error messages to trick users into clicking on their banners. This is a big win for the community as it will help to improve the Internet's ailing perceived user experience. Most of you have seen Bonzi's banners, and probably most of you won't admit to having been fooled by them at some point. Well, imagine how many novice computer users were tricked into installing again, or paying for software they really did not need. Congratulations and thanks to Lukins & Annis for a job well done. Interestingly, bonzi.com has been returning connection refused all day. This is usually one of the net's busiest sites."

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Oh bullshit by The+Terrorists · 2003-05-28 06:00 · Score: 0, Flamebait

User interfaces were developed to interface with the user. That means that lots of science was put into them to make them easy to use, intelligible, etc.
That's also why advertisers use interfaces that are very similar. They want to encourage familiarity and comfort with their ad, to get people to click on it.
Also, parodic uses of common UI's do occur. These are protected under the first amendment. Just for civil liberties in general this is a bad court case. It's similar to the Nike free-speech/commercial speech court case recently in the US supreme court.