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Bonzi Class Action Suit Settled: No Foolin'!
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."
Interestingly, bonzi.com has been returning connection refused all day. This is usually one of the net's busiest sites.
Ah...a little thing called justice.
Anyone remember when Bonzi first came out? I was a tech back then, and almost all of the systems on the campus were crashing and experiencing major slow down for a couple of days. I would run the usual gamut of questions: "Did you install anything new? Are you using AIM or ICQ? How many programs do you have open?". Asking these questions over the phone is futile, but you do it anyways, cause you're a lazy tech and you don't want to leave the air conditioned NOC. So I had to eventually turn off the game of Quake, log out of heat.net, and carry my lazy ass down to all of the offices. It was funny to be half listening to the clerk/professor/secretary/manager telling me about how they "never install anything on their computer" and how they "always run scandisk and the virus scanner on Friday at 4:30pm" and bla bla bla, just as their system grinds to a halt with a big purple ape on the screen jumping out at you, and the jarring blare of a long drawn out "uh ohh!!" that corresponds with the reception of 80 new ICQ messages.
I thought my OS X aqua icons turned into these nasty, square-shaped, clunky, windows-esch styled buttons.
Their scheme (not to be mistaken for the way more profitable, way more illegal Ponzi scheme) most likely made them enough money to be of value to a lot of other seedy companies.
Still - a milestone !
Except for one thing...parody with intent to defraud is not protected, and never has been (so far as I know, IANAL). Bonzai and other similar UI based ads were completely and totally intended to fool the unsupecting user into taking an action they ordinarily wouldn't, and generally to spend money they wouldn't ordinarily spend. That's fraud, and it's illegal, even if you claim it's a parody.
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 ...
A big win? What are you smoking? Bonzai duped countless users for years and completely got away with it. They didn't have to pay anything. A big win would be if they got slapped with such a huge fine that it would serve as a lesson to other companies contemplating the same sort of "business model".
GMD
watch this
Bonzi doesn't have to pay any money? I guess Perfect Tommy and the rest of the Hong Kong Cavaliers managed to save the day after all!
:)
Bad joke, I know but it had to be said, err... written.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
It doesn't, truthfully; but those novice users are still responsible for their actions. More importantly, this will help future novice users from falling for the same spiel. Sometimes, that's all you can do.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
### GIVE ME A BREAK! ### Has anyone noticed the guy (Philip J. Carstens) who is suing Bonzi Software also sued his "former employer" after he sustained an "injury" of a "traumatic nature" when he bit into a piece of "Halloween Candy" taken from a dish located on the reception desk of his employer and "broke loose a dental crown."
It's kind of like the story about the burglar who sued for being trapped for 8 days in a garage of a house that he burgled -- with "nothing" to survive on, except a case of soft drinks and a bag of dry dog food.
You should read his legal arguement: "The candy was either furnished by Mr. Carstens' employer, or by the receptionist employed by Mr. Carstens' employer, with full knowledge of the company's management and because the injury occurred in the course of his employment, Mr. Carstens had clearly sustained an injury compensable under the Industrial Insurance Act."
Compensable? What does that word mean? Do they mean like... as in... compensation? Do they mean like... M-O-N-E-Y?
But the really shocking thing is: HE WON THE CANDY LAWSUIT AND ACTUALLY GOT MONEY FOR HIS "TRAUMATIC INJURIES"! You can read all the "traumatic" details of that fateful day at: http://www.wa.gov/biia/890723.htm
However, there's one more interesting twist to this story. It turns out the "businessman" who filed the lawsuit is not really a "businessman" after all, but a lawyer who is just pretending to be someone else -- and it gets worse -- the "employer" that Mr. Carstens sued was none-other-than the law firm of "Ludkins & Annis" -- that's right, the same law firm who is now suing Bonzi Software on Mr. Carstens' behalf.
If you are scratching your head, so am I. I don't get it. What's really going on here? This lawyer claims he does not work for the law firm of Ludkins & Annis -- yet, their website in Google's "cache" says: "Philip J. Carstens has been a principal at the law firm of Ludkins & Annis since 1974."
SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOU HAVE A LAWYER -- WHO SUID HIS OWN LAW FIRM FOR BEING "TRAUMATICLY INJURED" BY A PIECE OF HALOWEEN CANDY -- AND NOW THIS SAME GUY HAS BEEN "INJURED" BY INTERNET POP-UP ADS TOO.
The poor guy. I guess some people just have all the bad luck.
These banners aren't fraudulent just because of what they say -- although what they say is certainly deceptive as well. My most serious objection to them is that they are deliberately designed to look like something much more important than advertising. If a company started putting up roadside advertisements made to look like road construction signs, little carts with blinking arrows made of individual lights (such as the DOT uses), and so on, in order to convince drivers that their driveway was the next exit, or that it was imperative to get off at their exit as part of a detour due to road construction, would we allow that? (Okay, Microsoft is not a government agency, but the importance of operating systems error messages on a computer is very similar to the importance of highway department messages on a highway.)
WARNING Linux user! You have some Micro$oft webpages in your browser's cache! We can help you remove them safely!
Open up a shell and type: apt-get install hitthemonkey
K THX!
\\ Mitch
Spyware Blaster (http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.ht ml) is nice because it prevents spyware from installing by fooling Windows into thinking its already installed by making regisitry keys with the spyware ClassIDs. It also prevents you from seeing ads and spyware by changing IE's privacy host to reject anything from a list of spyware domains. (even doubleclick.net so about half the ads on the internet disapeared in IE for me) It also auto-updates its known host list. This will only help you prevent spyware, but it also comes with a tool for reseting your browser pages. (So if you installed yahoo bar and can't figure out where it reset your default search page and error pages at in the regisitry this will help).
Ad-aware (http://www.lavasoft.de/index.html) is a nice client side product for scanning and cleaning out spyware from your system. Its free version will do almost everything the paid version will but it won't doing anything automaticaly.
mynetwatchman.com does a very good job at listing bad hostnames and ips so if you want you can check that site for more info.
Hope that helps!
No.
I don't think settlements have any value as far as precedent goes.
IANAL, but they do...
See, this settlement means that it's not correct to say that Bonzi lost the lawsuit, but it does allow somebody to say that Bonzi didn't win either. They gave up, indicating that Bonzi didn't believe enough in its own argument to bother to take it to a judge or jury.
So, to the next Bonzi-like company that comes along the message is that FUI isn't likely to be defendable in court. Yeah, there's a chance somebody else could defend the use of FUI in court and end up a winner because in the eyes of the court this is still an undecided question. However, in the eyes of the greedy businessman there's already a precedent logged in the world's history that says the first company to try to use FUI in a bold way got a public embarassment and was forced to accept an agreement that made them promise to never use FUI again.
Will there eventually be somebody willing to take the chance that FUI will stand up in court, of course. However, there's a good number of business people who when shown what happened to Bonzi will take that information and conclude that "somebody already tried that and failed" and take their company's marketing in a differnt direction, so it's going to be a good long time before somebody bold enough to make heavy use of FUI comes along.
FUI's not dead, but this settlement has it hospitalized.
nope -- I don't see any of them anymore thanks to the userContent.css style sheet.
it will match urls for ads and replace the image with nothing. So, you get the web page without any irritating ads at all.
The css lines are customizable as much as you like. They look like this:
A:link[HREF*="?click"] IMG { display: none ! important }
A:link[HREF*="?banner"] IMG { display: none ! important }
more details and the file at this url:l laCustomize
http://www.fogcat5.com/twiki/bin/view/Fogcat/Mozi
I worked at a corporate office for about a week before everyone got laid off. Naturally, they learned of my skill with computers and wanted me to fix them during breaktime and such. Being nice, I did. AOL Companion. AOL. Bonzi buddy. Gator. Weathercast. With these programs and Windows open only, newly booted, the machines had about 20% free system resources. Considering they'd be working and Gator or Bonzi buddy would popup and make noise and disturb them, how much damage is it doing? How much fun is it to be in the middle of a big data entry project, in the 'zone' and you get disturbed by a gigantic monkey with no 'off' button that wants to eat/nap/take your money? Not very much, I'd imagine. So I uninstalled everything. AOL Companion, Bonzi buddy, Gator, Weathercast, but I left AOL on non-startup. Just for their convenience. Next day same thing happens. "I was just clicking the targets and..." The targets. Isn't it illegal to say you've won something and you've really won nothing? Not even a high score on the high score list. But you've just won SPYWARE for your mad banner-clicking skills. Don't get me started on how illegal things like Xupiter should be to put on someone's computer without their permission. Even if their computer gracefully accepts the file and will run it, it still should require the users' authorization. And none of those "Installing.." boxes that just pop up with a progress bar and no cancel button or X, either.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Don't misunderstand me, I am a HUGE fan of the first amendment (and an ACLU member).
You are correct. This has nothing to do with the first amendment, nor do most issues where people cry out about it. The first amendment, with relation to freedom of speech, simply states that the GOVERNMENT cannot prevent free speech, except in the cases of public endangerment, fraud, or misrepresentation. Police may not be allowed to stop a 'peaceful protest,' but Joe Citizen can go down and put duct tape over their mouths.**
This case against Bonzi is purely fraud and misrepresentation. They are purposely deceiving potential "clients" in hopes of gaining something of monetary value.
-Ab.
** Putting duct tape over their mouth to shut them up does NOT infringe on their first amendment rights. Private citizens and entities retain the right to regulate speech. It does, however, break other laws, such as simple assault, unlawful detainment, and generally being a prick.
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
...it's good to see the monkey being spanked.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?