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House Passes Another Spyware Bill

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the federal-pound-me-in-the dept.

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."

2 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Maybe another Law isn't necessary by Trigun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 The world will truly be a better place, even if our computer clocs are out of date by a couple minutes, or we don't know what the weather is like in Yemen.

  2. Who will serve the criminal penalties by blankman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.