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Utah Sees First Spyware Case
denlin writes "According to a story at The Register: 'Overstock.com is set to become the first company to take action under Utah's new anti-spyware law. The company has filed a complaint against online retailer SmartBargains in the third district court in Salt Lake City. Utah's spyware law, the world's first, only made the statute book on 3 May. Utah is the only state with current spyware legislation, although California and Iowa are considering their own versions of the law.'"
The article is a bit sparse on detail, but here's a link I dug up: Link.
Quite law, that. I wonder if it will work?
Though the "software license agreements" that most adware pushers have people page through seemingly give them the right do produce the pop up ads, this particular lawsuit addresses the end result -- the software equivalent of hiring someone to wear a billboard for your store to stand in the doorway of your nearest competition. Your hireling wouldn't necessarily prevent them from going in, but it annoys the heck out of the consumer, and infringes on the space of your competition.
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A friend of mine ran Adaware last night & it found 2 tracking cookies, not a huge deal. I tell her to download Spybot & run it, and she found *118* more spyware related files. The moral of the story is use em both if you want to be sure you're clean.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I want to get on the band wagon and file a suit against Overstock.com! I bought one thing from them and I have been getting bombarded with emails sometimes two or three times a day.
I even tried to opt out of their email list and the onslaught continues. So before they start sueing people they need to examine their in house activites.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
and that isnt the worst of them! check out this little "dictionary" of -ware terms...
well, yes. and in fact the 1st A. gives broad protections mainly to political speech. you can stand in the park a rail against the mayor all you like. but the protections for commercial speech are *much* more narrow. and yes, forcing you to pay for them to advertise to you is not protected by the 1st A.
I know that there are "NO first amendment rights to advertise" as I am an educated USAian.
I don't think you're even slightly well-educated:
"The First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation." Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).
However when you say "if it's not expressly forbidden, it's ok to do it" sounds more like Amsterdam to be honest.
Nope -- that's the English tradition.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I posted something in another thread that was related to this.
Part of it boils down to an unexplained aside in an 1886 Supreme Court ruling that grants corporations 14th amendment rights. This has been used to imply that corporations are 'citizens' and deserve the other rights too.
Also, it really isn't free speech if it costs people something is it (bandwidth, etc)?
I think you hit the nail on the head there - their right to freedom of speech does not grant them the right to use *your* private facilities to do it.
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -Thomas Jefferson
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
I agree that both must be used to catch everything - and the corallary - Run both on all of the user profiles on a given machine
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
After Adaware and Spybot pronounced my wife's PC clean, it still appeared to have problems. So I ran Moosoft's "The Cleaner" and found nine more Trojans.
The moral of this extended story is: don't stop at one or maybe even two spyware-adware removers. Malware is clever and insidious and needs to be treated with a "cocktail" mix of software antibiotics.
Hello, jwcorder. I'm the Senior Network Engineer at Overstock.com. I was sorry to hear that you're having trouble unsubscribing from our emailing lists. We are continually doing our best to make sure that the only people receiving our e-mails are those that actually want to receive them.
Long story short, if you've unsubscribed via our website, and you are still receiving e-mails (promoting the latest deals), please contact postmaster@overstock.com
As a further peace offering, to be absolutely certain you are no longer bothered by unwanted e-mails (from us), feel free to contact me directly at: jon@overstock.com. I'm offering you this address as a token of my sincerity.
Overstock, as a company, is opposed to SPAM. I, as an engineer and administrator, detest SPAM, so please believe me that I sincerely want to make sure that you're not getting pestered by unwanted e-mails (from us).
This offer stands for any of the rest of you loyal Slashdot readers. Overstock has some great deals to offer you, but if you don't want to hear about them, please let us know (you can unsubscribe on the website, or contact us via either e-mail addresses I've mentioned). Thanks for your patience. I look forward to hearing from you and serving you.
- Jon Fullmer