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Washington State Outlaws Spyware
An anonymous reader submits "Today, the Governor of Washington signs a a bill outlawing spyware (bill history) which imposes penalties of $100,000 per violation. Spyware is broadly defined. It includes everything from changing a browser's bookmarks or homepage settings, "Opening multiple, sequential, stand-alone advertisements in the owner or operator's internet browser", keystroke-logging, taking over control of the computer, modify its security settings, and even "Falsely representing that computer software has been disabled." But here is my favorite: "Prevent, through intentionally deceptive means, an owner or operator's reasonable efforts to block the installation or execution of, or to disable, computer software by causing the software that the owner or operator has properly removed or disabled automatically to reinstall or reactivate on the computer." Microsoft and Ebay both testified in support of the bill. On May 10th, a similar law banning Internet and email phishing was also passed."
For those that do not follow Washington politics, the Governor's race was very close. A republican won the first count and the first machine re-count. The margin of victory in each was less than 100 votes. On the hand recount, the democratic person won by 142(?) votes. There are some issues about dead people voting, and people voting twice. While the results have been certified, the republican party has taken the case to court. As of today, there is a democratic governor, but how long she will be in power is unknown.
Remember, the CAN-SPAM act revoked all the state's anti-spam laws, including Washington's. I'm a Washington resident and my inbox has more spam than ever since CAN-SPAM passed. "CAN-SPAM" indeed, now they sure can, and with the government's blessing!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
These prohibitions do not apply to any monitoring of a subscriber's internet service by a telecommunications carrier, cable operator, computer hardware or software provider, or provider of information service for network or computer security purposes.
So, when M$ looks at and deletes your files for supposed copyright violations, that's a "security" issue and they are OK. It does not matter that they have all of the other definitions of spyware and are much more invasive, they are a "software provider" doing it for "security".
The definition is so broad that it's hard to imagine who is not a "software provider" doing something for "security". Oh wait, now I know, anyone Microsoft does not like is not a "software provider".
A real spyware law would spank M$, HP and many other "software providers" for all the things this bill legitimately complains about and then allows.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Actually, the Republican party is mostly claiming that felons were illegally voting. The problem is, many of the people the Republicans are claiming are felons - aren't. Most have juvy crimes, which should have been sealed at 18 which did not affect their voting rights. Others, never had their rights removed at all, or had their voting privilages reinstated.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic heartland of King County, 50 valid ballots were found to have never been counted, and are still in their envelopes. What a mess. I just hope my vote isn't one of those 50.
The whole mess has been playing out in the papers for months now, it's getting very old.
Tepp
Redmond != Bill Gates.
Nintendo has a HQ in Redmond.
There's a lot of independant companies here in Redmond that have no association with MS in any way.
Google has a HQ in Kirkland, but you don't see people saying "whatever Kirkland wants, Kirkland gets...." or maybe that's just because Kirkland is a Grade A dump.
Depressing place.
Tepp
Here is a Timeline for the events (with an obvious conservative slant).
WA's anti-spam law was useful for the dedicated individuals that took the time to track spam to it's source and file a civil action with the state against them. If you could track them down and you had otherwise fulfilled your own obligations under the law, it was a simple matter to get a $500 judgement in your favor for each actionable missive. Collecting was another matter.
The only real chance for success would be if the spammer were also in Washington.
Like all anti-spam legislation it did require some compliance with legal authority on the part of the spammer. as if someone selling fake Chinese Cialis is worried about legal authority.
The potato it is uninformed.
Yup, the trial is opening in Wenatchee, WA (Chelan County). I live here and it makes the papers anytime something new happens. I'm pretty sure that your assumption that the republicans have not conceded is correct, considering the trial is set to begin fairly soon.
;o)
On a side note, there was some serious fraud on the western side of this state. We need some friggin UN election officials over there in king county!
The summary of this bill here at Slashdot seems to suggest it outlaws keystroke logging, but in fact it's a bit more specific and talks about transmitting, etc. Still, one thing that disturbs me is fragile wording like:
It looks to me like if you just skip recording characters every now and then, you're safe on that point. Or if you transferred the data first to another computer and then maybe a person or program or corporation or someone's dog picked up the data instead of having it transferred to them.
It probably needs at least some wording like "substantially all" instead of "all", and "entity" instead of "person".
I doubt this is the only problem with the legislation, it was just the first thing I saw when I spot-checked that one sentence.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Killing sasquatch is currently illegal in Skamania County, Washington. At this time Bigfoot has no state wide protection. However, if the sasquatch actually exists and someone kills one you can expect a public outcry. /Grew up in Washington
"Who's going to believe a talking head?" - Herbert West
Since the software has no way of knowing what state it's being installed in, this is like if your town council tried to regulate, or ban, the internet.
Not true. It is possible for software to determine it's own locality if it is connected to the internet, which is how most spyware gets installed in the first place. Although it is not 100% accurate, it is close enough that they could say they made every effort.
A person charged under this bill could sue the county/city where he was charged, for violating his civil rights to commerce. So the bill may just be a bluff.
I don't know where you got that but that is just plain wrong. The bill does not contain any language excluding or preferring any State's software over another. This bill does not care where the software came from, but it does apply to computers in this state. In general, you cannot sue one locality for the laws in another locality, you must sue the locality you are claiming has done you harm. It is called 'jurisdiction'. For them to even come close, they would have to sue the state of Washington itself and claim the burden this places on their business is greater than the burden it places on a company in this state. BTW, that is highly unlikely to happen.
And, to your last question: Yes, there is some broad language in it that might cause problems for shady companies selling legitimate software with adverse/unintended side effects. I think overall, this new law really comes closer to anything I expected to come out my home state.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.