Judge OKs Competitive Pop-Up Ads

Mirkon writes "A while back, U-Haul filed suit against adware giant WhenU for displaying competing advertisements to users as they browsed U-Haul's site. Friday, District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee's ruling dismissed U-Haul's suit, saying '...the fact is that the computer user consented to this detour when the user downloaded WhenU's computer software from the Internet,' and 'Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother, unsolicited bulk e-mail, "spam," as a burden of using the Internet.' While the ruling was issued in the context of unfair competitive marketing, it's speculated that this will have broad implications in the fight against adware - and they aren't kind to the user. WhenU chief executive Avi Naider is unfortunately quoted as saying 'This is a victory for consumer choice -- it ultimately protects consumers' right to control what they see on their computer screens.'"

Comments

Re:Ironic

[Ignis Flatus]

When running either Spybot or AdAware (can't remember which right now), it detected spyware on my machine that was implanted when I installed a wireless mouse and keyboard from Logitech. So, those are the dangers we face now. Every time we add a peripheral to our machines, we could unwittingly be installing a trojan program. Probably, there was mention of the trojan somewhere in the EULA, but I personally take this as an act of aggression by the device manufacturer.