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House Passes Another Spyware Bill
SkippyTPE writes "The AP reports that the US House of Representatives has unanimously passed a law criminalizing Spyware. This is the second such bill in two days (the first imposing civil penalties, whereas this bill imposes criminal penalties). Information on the bills (HR2929 and HR4661) can be found here and here respectively."
There is a difference in unnecessary laws, and establishing laws to prevent unethical business practices. Would you like to be egregiously harmed only to be told that, although it should be illegal, nobody has got around to writing a law against what has happened to you, so you might want to go cry somewhere else.
Good Riddance Gator/Claria. The world will truly be a better place, even if our computer clocs are out of date by a couple minutes, or we don't know what the weather is like in Yemen.
Is there a good HOWTO on cleaning up a Windoze box from spyware and keeping it clean? I use the following method:
Install Ad-aware, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spybot S&D, update, clean, reboot, clean
Install Spywareblaster, update, enable protection
This method has worked pretty well in the past. In the last couple days, I've gotten infected by some browser hijackers and no amount of cleaning and resetting things will delete the %$#@$$#%ers. Is there a better method?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Does this mean that the software that the FBI uses to track email in an effort "to fight terrorism" falls under the "spyware" law?
~G
If this becomes law, and a piece of spyware is found to be illegal, who exactly goes to jail? The programmers who wrote it? The stockholders of the company that paid the programmers to write it? The owners of the web site from which a user unwittingly downloaded and installed it? Suppose I determine that I got a piece of spyware from IP address X... is the ISP on the hook for criminal charges too?
Give Congress credit for trying, but I don't see you can realistically make installing spyware a jailable offense.
Seriously, I'm all for anti spyware and anti scam measures, but is this really going to address the core issue? That is, people aren't educated enough to NOT fall for scams? And if they AREN'T educated enough to not fall for it in the first place, what good will the law do?
:D ) is long gone. Incidentally those people who would be fooled by spyware are more than likely those who wouldn't know how to deal with it in the first place (spybot, adaware, or cleaning the system registry manually).
A current example may be those "multi level marketing schemes" like Vector or Pre paid legal (they are really just pyramids in disguise). We've got laws against pyramid schemes, and yet these companies are still around (they call themselves multi level marketing in most cases, just to avoid the legal hassels). The people who actually get caught up in the schemes are those who are a) to stupid or b) to greedy to not realize what's going on; and by the time the person has found out that they have been duped, the perp (I've been watching law and order
And then there's the question of how many people will actually actively pursue a lawsuit against spyware companies. I'm willing to bet that most people will say, "spyware is against the law, the companies can't do that and if they install it on my computer I'll write a nasty letter to them" instead of "spyware? time to sue". Almost like what's going on with spam..
Because if not, every worm writing script kiddie is probably crapping a load right now. The law goes into effect today. If your worm infects someone tomorrow, even if you wrote it years ago, you're hosed.
I hope.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Many spywares I've seen are in Windows directories. This may be old hat, but can't Windows do a simple hash or cert check on a file going into c:/Windows or c:/Windows/System to see if it's an "official" or "authorized" file?
A simple message like "Application X is trying to put a file called NOTEPAD.EXE in your Windows/system directory -- this is not a Microsoft file, do you want to allow this?" would suit me.
Goodness knows Windows nags me about a million other things on a daily basis ("Updates ... get your updates!").
Sam
Firstly, I'm of the mind that developers should (unless not possible) isolate their entire application to their own directory and only go into c:/Windows only when absolutely necessary. This makes things much cleaner (and is generally the Mac approach, by the way, that's why you can just drag and drop one icon to the applications folder to install something on a Mac).
Secondly, obviously there are times when an application *has* to place files under c:/windows -- in fact, Microsoft implemented a certification program for drivers with XP so now you get warned suring installation if the driver isn't certified for XP. (The is a cash grab by MS, but in their defense they attribute most XP instability problems with bad driver code written by third parties so it's a reasonable undertaking.)
In cases where an app needs to put a file in c:\windows I have no problem with "Call Of Duty wants to install a driver in c:\windows\system -- is that okay?" I'll just click 'yes'.
But I want to be able to click 'no' when "App-you-didn't-even-mean-to-install wants to replace your NOTEPAD.EXE and WRITE.EXE with spyware -- is that okay?"
Sam
the spyware is still being created by or contracted for american citizens. doesnt matter if they operate their scams offshore. they're still under US jurisdiction.
Good Riddance Gator/Claria. The world will truly be a better place
Yes, but these kinds of laws set a very dangerous precedent for all of us. Putting people in jail for distributing spyware is very irresponsible. Fine them to death so they can't make payroll, whatever, but jail time?
What if the next law throws you in jail for trading music? Or for selling software that conflicts with someone else's very dubious software patent?
Time and again congress has demostrated that it is completely incompetant with regard to information technology. They are ill informed, have no expertise or training with technology, and seem only interested in extending the paradigm of centralized control into the internet. Which is exactly the opposite of what makes the internet great.
The last thing I want to do is defend spyware vendors, but going from discussing a bill to imposing jail sentences in less than a week is scary. These people just seem to love sending people to jail. America has the highest number of citizens in jail per-capita of any country in the world. Applauding moronic laws like this is just giving them permission to raise that statistic even higher.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
This is the bill Philip Corwin, Kazaa's lobbyist, wanted.