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Spyware Company Sues Utah Over Anti-Spyware Law
cgibby98 writes "An earlier Slashdot article talks about how web businesses oppose Utah's new spyware law. A story in Tuesday's Deseret Morning News says that WhenU.com filed suit Monday against the state, its governor, and attorney general, trying to keep the law from going into effect next month. The lawsuit claims the law violates WhenU's constitutionally-protected right to advertise."
The Supreme Court has ruled numerous times that commercial speech (advertising) can be restricted. It's not the same as political speech which gets a much higher level of protection.
I'm not familiar with WhenU's software, but I find this hard to believe
It is hard to believe, 'cause it isn't true. WhenU installs are also a pain in the arse to remove.
My dad recently downloaded some desktop weather software (though I'm not sure why he wants to know the weather of his desktop), and this junk installed with it. I tried to duplicate the problem by installing on another machine, and was never informed that it [whenu] was installing. Luckily i tried it on a test VM, so I didn't get the pleasure of uninstalling twice.
This company produces one of the hardest spyware / adware program to get rid off (Save and Weathercast) I've spen days fixing computer with there software installed. Can I send them a bill for all the trouble they have cost my company. People click the EULA but give them an option to uninstall the software and not hijack the machine.
I just thought I'd share, so no one else has to waste their time looking for it. (I haven't read it yet, however)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I was trying to see WhenU's side of the story by looking at . Unfortunately, when I tried to go there, my company popped up its standard "We can't let you see this web site" message. The blocking category? "Spyware". Apparenly the State of Utah is not the only group that classifies WhenU that way.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If WhenU.com is unhappy about Utah law, I can only imagine how they will respond if either the proposed Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge (SPYBLOCK) Act or the Controlling Invasive and Unauthorized Software Act is passed and signed into law.
These bills have been covered by:
PC World
InfoWorld
ComputerWorld, and
TechNewsWorld
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
The most notable case is Central Hudson Gas & Electric v Public Service Commission, which resulted in the Central Hundson test:
Lawmakers that are anti-spyware would likely consider it deceptive.
Gotta love their press releases...
Whenu Wins Another Legal Victory In Fight For Consumer Desktop FreedomConsumer desktop freedom... Nice...
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
Going to?
There are already enough weird laws on the books to do that. In one way or another, whether you know it or now, we're all criminals under some law in some way. It's just a matter of whether it's worth the effort to prosecute us. Tomorrow morning, you could awaken to find that you've pissed off some bureaucrat somewhere and find a zillion small fine notices in your mailbox for stuff people do everyday without a thought.
...would also like to add that telemarketing companies recently tried to challenge the "Do Not Call" registry arguing that it was protected under the first amendment, and were denied: http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/20 04/02/23/403968bc4418a
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
...and the Bill of Rights is directed at the government, not individuals.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
What you're not getting is that while this behavior may not be unconstitutional, that restricting it isn't either. Companies do not have a CONSTITUTIONAL right to advertized in any way they choose. It is a plain legal fact that municipalities, states, and the federal government, have the right to control business behavior. Close to every city will have laws about the types, sizes, and locations of signs that a business can put up for instance. Heck we have laws saying certain types of business are completely illegal - though in Utah the 'network-marketing' is all the rage among the annoying and stupid segment of the pouplation)
SO, if a legal body (ie Utah state legislature) decides to restrict certain types of constitutionally allowed advertising they can, and do.
I haven't read the law, and I dont know if it is a good one or a bad one. But I do know that your similarly informed statement about them being on solid legal ground is incorrect. States CAN regulate the types of advertising allowed within the state.
Free Online Dark Fantasy RPG - http://www.blackmud.com
Yep already happens for local calls at the airport if you look for the right phones. ( I lucked out at miami international )
I picked up the phone and it asked if I wanted to make a free local phone call ( up to 5 minutes ), so I listened to the advertising for something going on in miami, then it connected to the number i wanted.
onepoint
if you see me, smile and say hello.
By downloading the SaveNow software, you give permission to WhenU.com to display relevant contextual information and offers. The SaveNow software selects which ads and offers to display to individual users based on several factors, including: URLs associated with Web pages visited by the user, search terms typed by the user into search engines, HTML content of the Web pages viewed by the user and the local zip code of the user.
a sp
The software protects users' privacy by uploading a database of content in small chunks to individual desktops, and then determining on the desktop whether to retrieve information from WhenU.com or third-party servers. To protect user privacy, the same database of content is sent to all desktops. Decisions regarding which ads to retrieve to an individual desktop are all processed on the user's desktop - and isolated from WhenU.com servers. User privacy is also protected in the following manner:
1) Personally-identifiable information is NOT required in order to use the software and WhenU.com does NOT know the identity of individual users of the software
2) As the user surfs the Internet, URLS visited by the user (i.e. the user's "clickstream data") are NOT transmitted to WhenU.com or any third party server
3) WhenU.com does NOT assemble personally-identifiable browsing profiles of users
4) WhenU.com does NOT assemble anonymous machine-identifiable browsing profiles of individual users
5) WhenU.com does NOT track which ads and offers are seen or clicked on by individual machines - analysis and tracking is done in the aggregate
Each individual desktop is assigned an anonymous, unique machine ID. This machine ID is used ONLY to enable WhenU.com to count unique, active desktops in the network. The machine ID is NOT used to determine which ads to serve individual users or to create browsing profiles of users. When ads are displayed by the software, impressions and click-throughs are reported to WhenU.com servers. To protect user privacy and prevent WhenU.com or any third party from assembling user profiles, the unique machine ID is NOT included in the impression and click-through reports sent by the desktop to WhenU.com servers.
SaveNow does NOT place any cookies on your desktop. It is possible that a third party advertising on our network might place a cookie on your desktop. If you wish to opt-out from third party cookies, please click on the following link and follow the instructions: http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.
WeatherCast's function is to provide you with your local weather conditions and forecasts. WeatherCast adheres to all of the privacy statements made above in this section. WeatherCast does store your zip code or city on your desktop in order to provide you with your local weather; however, there is NO personally-identifiable information required or collected in order to use the software. Your zip code may be used either by WeatherCast or Save! to show you targeted local offers.
WhenU.com may update privacy statements for the SaveNow software at any time. More information about SaveNow is available here, or for any further questions please email privacy@whenumail.com
Yes. However, WhenU is not splicing into anything. When installed, it clearly states it's being installed. You can choose not to complete the installation if you disagree with it. WhenU is not a viral spyware that hijacks anything. Let's not turn this into a witch hunt and sight "malicious" spyware as a cause to attack spyware that is installed due to ignorance.
is that US law regards corporations as persons, with rights. While I'm not clear whether or not they are considered "artificial" persons (as distinguished from "natural" persons) and thus their rights would in theory be held subordinate to those of natural persons, corporations can afford better lawyers. In a court system where the smoothest-talking legal team often prevails, you can see the problem.
In this case, a corporation is claiming free speech protections under the First Amendment...which is a load of purest bullshit given the nature of their business, but courts have bought into dumber arguments.
A quick Google for "corporate personhood" will give you a pretty good picture of how Americans who are familiar with the issue feel about it.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
you probably know it more as savenow. a nasty varient of spyware. if you do a ctrl-alt-del and you see savenow in your process list, then you got it.
this site tells you what it does
spybot and ad-aware both remove it if you got it on your PC
click here for spybotSD
For Ad-Aware.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
They claim - and I quote:
WhenU's software, one of the apparent targets of the act, is installed only with user consent, and does not invade the privacy of computer users.
Well for starters, at the University where I work, I run one of the computer labs for the particular college I work under (we have several). Despite our best efforts, we invariably have to clean a machine out from a bunch of spyware that has infested it - Deep Freeze seems to have culled that from the main lab, but as the rest of campus isn't subnetted yet (stupid central IT budget) we can't roll it out on the rest.
What do I find when I go through the machines with Spybot to figure out what's going on with them? Invariably, it's the same fucking story.
eZula, Gator (YES YOU ARE SPYWARE YOU FUCKING LYING BASTARDS), WhenU.SaveNow, Lycos Sidebar, Apropos, and whatever else their current tricklers are dumping in.
Twice we've caught them actually installing. In the background, no user clicks required, no EULA agreed to. Just the installers dropping in from some webpage and then silently running the trickler (and downloading OTHER tricklers) till the machine's spyware-ed half to death.
Fuck you, WhenU. We all hope you go away. The POINT of this legislation is to drive you out of business and I hope the court throws your lying ass right out on the street to suffer.
On the one hand, I agree with you. We have WAY too many laws, there is no end in sight, and that is BAD.
However, the alternative is a country in which the masses have more freedom than they know what to do with.
As Plato so aptly pointed out, the masses are stupid. Most people are ill-equipped to manage their lives.
Perhaps if we also put a stop to the practice of suing pencil-makers after attempting to draw upon one's own eyeball, and allowed 'the masses' to kill themselves off...then maybe a more libertarian society would work....
How much of your cable bill do you think goes to each basic cable station? Do you think that ESPN even gets 5 cents per viewer? You don't get ads when you pay for HBO do you? That is because you are paying specifically for HBO (even if it is part of a package). Basic cable providers make their money off of advertising.
Any company that invests 401k money (or allows employees to select to invest their 401k money) into a startup company will last very long - the IRS will not only shut the 401K down but the company along with it. You might see a big pension fund invest in a venture capital fund. A fund with a lot of other money in it and a lot of distributed risk.
I'll have to check my schedule - I guess by your standards I need to start bribing politicans, since that is the only way profit-making businesses succeed. Since I've got employees that want to be paid (yup, they do - just asked), there needs to be a profit on sales here.
Quick question buddy: What exactly are you doing on the web if you get infected with Spyware even when using Firefox and have Windows XP immunized with Spybot? I'm running the same thing, and I have YET to get another piece of spyware. And I browse sites like cracks.am. I think those 5 apps were there beforehand, you just never uninstalled them completly. Try a virus scanner - some adware is actually viral.
This (sort of) actually happened. I believe that the court decided that you couldn't use a contract to enforce an illegal action (the distribution of the virus). It wasn't quite the same thing, but the result clearly indicates that if you are seen as a legitimate business, then it's probably going to be seen as illegal interferrence. But passing the law is classifying them as an illegal business, and therefore they shouldn't have the ability to coerce the illegal behavior through a contract.
Or something like that...IANAL, so the details are all fuzzy, but I think the sketch is correct.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Corporations ARE people. I won't blame you for not knowing this, since it happened way before you were born (SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, 1886.) A clerk's misleading notes on this Supreme Court ruling were later used to support the notion of "corporate personhood."
You can read more about it here.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer