D-Squared Can Resume Pop-Ups, For Now

linuxwrangler writes "According to this SF Gate article, U.S. District Judge Andre Davis said there was insufficient evidence for him to grant a preliminary injunction preventing D-Squared from using Microsoft's messenger service to send pop-up ads to Windows users. D-Squared used the Windows messenger service to pop-up ads as often as every 10 minutes. The ads promoted its product -- software to stop 'these unwanted and illegal pop-up messages forever with the click of a button' - a practice the FTC called 'high-tech extortion.'"

Comments

Damned If You Do...

[MBCook]

software to stop 'these unwanted and illegal pop-up messages forever with the click of a button'

OK. Let's all read this. Now this is either true or untrue. Let's take a look.

Option 1: the statement is true. That means that pop-ups are illegal, and hence the company is knowingly and willfuly violating the law. If this is the situation, they are in trouble.

Option 2: the statement is false. That means that pop-ups are NOT illegal. Hence the company is lying to extort money through practicing false advertising (along with probably being in violation of some of those new anti-spam laws).

Seems to me they have managed to write themselves into a corner. Now if we add to that some of the other charges that we might be able to make stick, they're in deeeeeeeeeeeeep trouble. Let's see what else we can come up with, shall we?

• Harassment - Isn't sending the same ad to someone and interupting what they are doing every 10 minutes harassment?
• Junk Fax - I suppose you could argue this one if spam e-mail counts
• Spam Laws - Mentioned above, this is spamming isn't it?
• Anti-hacker laws - Aren't there laws that make it illegal to use someone else's computer without their permission? Well surly forcing a computer to display something against the user's will would count.
• Violating TOS - Surly what these guys are doing is in violation of the terms of service of their ISP. Sue the ISP to get them shut off, and they'll be droped like a brick. Contine ad-infinitum, or the spammers get a clue, which ever comes first (take a guess).

Of course, spamming the spammer (and their lawyer) with these pop-up messages might finally do it. Am I the only one who thinks that someone who's stupid enough to do this in the first place probably isn't using their own software?

Re:Damned If You Do...

[0x0d0a]

The judge didn't say that they were in the right.

He just said that he didn't have enough evidence to issue a preliminary injunction.

The only time these should be issued is if there is immediate, severe, and irrevocable harm being caused by an action, and the judge feels that the harm-causer is unlikely to win their court case.

I'd say this is pretty reasonable. The idea is to keep law from becoming someone's subjective opinion -- the court is where the real arguments will be heard. Preliminary injunctions are emergency actions, not to be taken in every case.

from the got-firebird dept?

[Blob Pet]

What does firebird have to do windows messenger pop-ups, timothy?

Re:Stop that popup in 10 easy steps clicks for fre

[Anonymous Coward]

I got hit on #5

"The snapin below, reference in this document has been restricted by policy. Contact your administrator for details. Services."

Any suggestions?

How long before viruses are corporate?

[digitalvengeance]

Ok, let's analyze this on a technical level.

D-Squared is basically sending a series of packets to a specific port on the user's machine that is causing code to be ran, right?
What about the latest list of RPC virii? Don't they do exactly the same thing? Sure, the code that D-Squared is causing to be executed was written by MS and the code that the virii run are written by their respective authors - but the two are essentially the same.

How long before the courts allow virus authors to write antivirii and advertise them in the virus itself?

Re:Why do people put up with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

blahblahblah i hate windows blahblahblah i'm such an elitist blah blah blah. Funny, I've never had XP hang, freeze or crash, and I've been using it since beta. Under XP, I've also never had any Microsoft product hang, freeze or crash. It's only happened with a very small handful of 3rd party apps. I stick with updates, i run an anti-virus program and a firewall. I apply security patches and keep up to date with other security issues (IE: the messenger popups). Guess what? I run a very stable, never got hacked machine. so blah blah blah to you. Like linux, if you keep things up to date, you keep informed and you SECURE your machine, your pretty safe. Just like Linux! imagine that! wow!

Re:Why do people put up with it?

[captainkibble]

Purely from my own experience I'd say:

Maybe they like all their hardware to run out the box and not have to spend hours compiling software and configuring their PC? Maybe they like to have drivers at all for some of their hardware?

Maybe they like to play PC games without spending hours compiling software and configuring their PC?

Maybe they like to come home from work after programming/compiling and do some casual browsing and play a couple of games without having to spend ages at home what they have been doing at work all day?

Maybe they can't afford a Mac? ;)

Like many other folks I actually like Linux a lot. I have my own linux web server. I also try out different desktop distros from time to time. With varying degrees of success. For all its failings security wise Windows still has better hardware and software support and is damn easier to get up and running.