NYS Senator Suggests Criminalizing Spyware

putch writes "New York State Senator Michael Balboni has introduced legislation to make the dissemination of spyware a criminal act. You can read the full bill text here. Is this a good thing? It defines spyware as software that transmits personal information or computer usage data without obtaining explicit approval from the user. It would seem to me (IANAL) that it would be quite unenforceable, but may send the right message to spyware outfits. Also interesting is that it requires any 'legitimate' spyware to disclose any bandwidth it may consume and requires the disclosure to be in bits per second." The bill is quite short and readable. (This might remind you of the recently introduced anti-spyware bill in the U.S. Senate.)

Comments

Yes, this WILL end spyware

[AtariAmarok]

This effort from Congress will work very well. After all, they have a good track record. The day Bush signed the "Can Spam Act", the spam shut off; haven't seen any since.

Re:Criminalizing is a bad idea

[maximilln]

There were many of us who were enraged by the introduction of cookies to the WWW environment. Venerable web browsers such as lynx will, even today, still ask you explicitly if you want to store each and every cookie while more user-friendly web browsers have cookie access controls which do little more than hide the cookies from the user.

Those of us who warned of the slippery slope of cookies were ridiculed and ostricized by starry-eyed users who were lured by promises of ease of use, functionality, and customized foot rubs.

I guess they got what they deserve--spyware, malware, adware, and spam--now they want us to do something to stop it.