Slashdot Mirror
Top Web Businesses Oppose Utah Spyware Law
theodp writes "According to MediaPost.com: 'Some of the Web's leading content and technology providers have taken action to lobby against Utah's controversial Spyware Control Act, which is awaiting the governor's signature. Web publishers and businesses including AOL, Amazon, Cnet, eBay, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! signed a letter to the bill's sponsors arguing that the bill could create serious repercussions for the entire online community. The parties to the letter warned that the bill could interfere with computer security and would also impair the delivery of local, targeted ads'."
Companies like Claria and WhenU, for example, are legal adware providers, although each has been involved in high-profile lawsuits over their software. Both companies still face pending legal action.
What are they smoking? Claria is spyware.
"they let one company write the bill to suit themselves."
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6 32-cv2.htm but it still must be noted.
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People dont realize how epidemic this is in American politics. The politicians often don't even write the laws, they _literally_ allow companies to write the laws, and simply sign what they are given into law.
It even got to the point where laws are copyrighted, and one had to pay hundreds of dollars simply for a copy of the law. Someone posted a copy of the law online and was met with copyright complaints.
see here. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?
of course, they eventually found in Veeck's favor, http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/99/99-40
heres a slashdot article on it:
http://slashdot.org/yro/01/05/13/1921223.sht
I could also post a flurry of links regarding American fore-father's worries about the growing strength of "company" and to watch out for its influence on the government, but that would be preaching to the choir.
no
Your link is incorrect. The case is here.
"For the reasons discussed above, we REVERSE the district court's judgment against Peter Veeck, and REMAND with instructions to dismiss SBCCI's claims."
i am a soviet space shuttle
This is pretty much how it works. I was listening to the Utah House Legistlative session online (listening for the UTOPIA bill) when I first heard about this anti-spyware bill. I can confirm that many bills are written and submitted by companies with the sole intention of trying to protect their interests and block out competition.
The problem is, there were hundreds of bills that needed to be debated, and so each individual bill gets little debate time. When a technology bill comes up, the attitude they all have is "Well...I really don't know what it means. However, I have to vote on it. If nobody else raises any serious objections, I'll assume its a good bill." This bill didn't have any serious objections, and so it was quickly passed.
On a side note, the anti-UTOPIA bill was written almost solely by Qwest to kill the fiber optic plan. The bill survived the first few legal hurdles before some representatives started to actively question the bill and how it was designed by Qwest solely to kill competition. Then representatives drastically amended the bill for the better.
Go to http://www.spywareinfo.com. They have a far better database than I do.
Here's a hint, though - a changed WWW prefix to ehttp.cc. CoolWebSearch.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Basically the law says you can't sell Drain-O at a lemonade stand, not that you can't drink it on your own if you want to.