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

Is the Judge saying....

[SpaceLifeForm]

that the blame lies with Microsoft?

Re:Is the Judge saying....

[SpaceLifeForm]

This was a serious question. The judge was more or less saying that he couldn't assign enough blame *to* D-Squared to issue the injunction. Well, if it is not that clear to the judge at this point, does the judge believe that a different party might share some of the blame?

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.

I have an idea

[El]

Let's all send a large box of manure to D-Squared headquarters, with a note inside saying "For only $29.95, you can stop these illegal and unwanted mailings forever!" Or better yet, disable the damn message service! Or even better still -- run Linux.

Re:from the got-firebird dept?

[OutRigged]

Firebird has nothing to do with this, it's a service built into Windows. It's not MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger, it's just called Messenger. It's used to send alerts to clients over a network.

Stop that popup in 10 easy steps clicks for free.

[bryanp]

1. Start
2. Settings
3. Control Panel.
4. Administrative Tools.
5. Services.
6. Messenger
7. Change Startup Type to "Manual"
8. Stop.
9. Apply.
10. OK.

Re:from the got-firebird dept?

[mithras the prophet]

Thanks for playing, but Grandparent knows that, which is why he (rhetorically) asked why the Slashdot editor labeled the story such.

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

[Alsee]

What, no Profit?

-

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?

Why do people put up with it?

[zeugma-amp]

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'

That's the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Perhaps I don't get out enough.

Sometimes it amazes me what windows users will put up with to stay on the microsoft plantation. Messenger pop-ups ... Web popups ... Spyware ... Gator ... Browsers that you can't trust to accurately represent a URL ... Programs that crash at random (or even regular) intervals...

I'm sure there are lots of other everyday annoyances, since I don't have to deal with them anymore, they just don't come to mind.

I was speaking with a fellow at work today and he was complaing about having to reload his windows box yet again because of stability issues. Why do people continue to just suck it up and deal with this crap? I guess I just don't understand why even people who know about the alternatives and are completely capable of dealing with the change continue to be so willing to submit. My wife is one of those. I've told her flat out that google and her own wits are the only tech support she has anymore. Fortunately for her, she knows enough to be able to figure things out on her own and can navigate DOS better than most, but I just plain refuse to be an enabler with this annoying pile of warm cow patties that is windows.

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?

[snooo53]

Probably to spite elitist assholes like you who wont even help their own WIFE have a working computer.

Sometimes it amazes me what windows users will put up with to stay on the microsoft plantation...

Seriously, of all the "problems" you listed the only one that is vaguely Microsoft's fault is the messenger one. The rest can be avoided by a little common sense like actually reading what you're clicking 'yes' to. Using a browser like Mozilla or even one of hundreds of popup blockers. Installing regular patches/driver updates.

Why else do they put up with it? Oh I dunno, maybe because like 95% of the software out there is made for WINDOWS? Or the fact that some of us would rather simply run an executable rather than compiling, making sure all the packages and libraries are installed, checking dependencies, endless sifting through man pages and newsgroups to figure out how to do the most trivial of tasks, etc ad nauseum. And stability? Have you even tried 2k or XP? I haven't rebooted my 2k box since I last turned it on a week ago.

Don't get me wrong, I think Linux has a very bright future and has a good chance of dominating over Windows someday. But the fact is, Windows is the still the most usable OS out there for the time being.

Now quit being the jerk you are and go help your wife with her computer problems.

Re:Why do people put up with it?

[Texas Rose on Lava L]

Sometimes it amazes me what automobile users will put up with to stay on the road. Traffic jams... high gas prices... exorbitant insurance premiums... speeding tickets... parking tickets... sleazy used car dealers... sleazy new car dealers... global warming... accidents... dirty air... smog checks... lines at the dmv... toll roads... noise... road rage... wars in the middle east... smelly oil refineries... corrupt oil companies... lemons... shady repair shops... red light cameras... registration fees... finding parking at the mall...

If something is ubiquitous, and the alternatives are not well known or percieved to be inadequate/hard to use, or if people are required by their employers to use it, they'll put up with a lot of shit.

That said, if the downsides are particularly bad in a given situation, the alternatives can become quite popular. This is why public transportation is so popular in Manhattan, even though most of the USA drives everywhere. It's also why so many web servers run Apache, even though most people's desktops run windows.

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.

Why some people still use Windows

[0x0d0a]

There are a couple of reasons:

* Familiarity. Just as most people aren't willing to learn a new (possibly significantly superior) control interface to their car, most people don't want to relearn an interface to their computer.

* Software availability. Lots of custom and vertical-market software and games are only available for Windows.

* Lock-in. Microsoft is actively making it unpleasant to switch from their software.

A morsel for the troll

[FreeUser]

Don't get me wrong, I think Linux has a very bright future and has a good chance of dominating over Windows someday. But the fact is, Windows is the still the most usable OS out there for the time being.

• Not according to my mother, who switched from Windoze and now runs linux.
  
• Not according to my girlfriend, who switched from Windoze and now runs Apple OS X.
  
• Not according to my nieces and nefews (ages 2-14), who all run (at home) and prefer Linux over the windows systems they use at school, and who prefer open office over microsoft office.

Indeed, not according to a lot of people who are not particularly computer literate, are not at all idealogical with respect to software and digital freedom, and who still, once exposed to alternatives to Microsoft, never go back despite Microsoft's best efforts at lockin and petty harrassment via IE specific web pages, broken MS-only java implimentations, and the like.

Microsoft may be the most usable system for you. This may reflect your personal preferences, or it may reflect an idealogical, financial, or personal stake you have in Windows vs. other alternatives. Or it may be a function of unfamiliarity with the alternatives and a mind closed to them. Quite possibly the latter, as describing the crash prone, virus prone, digital-rights-mangled heap of buggy code that is Windows as more usable than Apple OS X, a system which even most Windows, Linux and FreeBSD enthusiasts will happilly admit is the easiest for non-clueful users to learn, certainly flies in the face of objective facts.

Indeed, emperical evidence suggests Windows is no longer easier to use than Linux (just more familiar), indeed, its propensity for worm and virus infestation, its continueing instability make it quite the opposite for those non-techie computer users I've exposed its alternatives to. (Even windows 2k dies for no good reason from time to time...not the daily reboots we once knew, but monthly reboots remain, something my OS X and Linux boxes do not suffer from).

Now quit being the jerk you are and go help your wife with her computer problems.

He is, by weaning her away from the source of those problems (shoddy Microsoft software), and using tough love where it is appropriate.