Slashdot Mirror
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."
"That government is best which governs least"
Come on! Must we have laws for such stupid things? Let Microsoft fix it's defective software instead of outlawing exploiting it.... Doesn't the government have more important things to worry about, like foreign policy, the energy crisis, and weapons of mass destruction?
First of all, my apologies to actual 'morons', who through no fault of their own were born intellectually challenged. I'm sorry for whatever offense I may cause by comparing you to the Slashdot readership, who where were born intellectually 'above average' (I'm being generous here) and reasonably fortunate but yet choose to behave like a mindless mob calling for lynchings and/or property 'redistribution'.
As for the Slashdot readership, so: you like something, therefore make it legal; you don't like something, therefore make it illegal. Is this the extent of your thought process? You want to see people locked up somewhere they'll be ass raped for the 'crime' of annoying you. Spam, adware, ... anything you 'don't like' somehow deserves jail time or exorbitant fines just because you don't like it and (purely out of your own malice) wish to see harm come to those responsible. No thought given to proportionality, appropriateness, if a matter is better handed through other means, and how this affects you in the long term.
Willful neglect on the part of Microsoft allowed the spyware industry to take root (IE and Windows are *rife* with cosy niches for spyware to live, and the philosophy has always been 'program knows best'). Microsoft has been aware of this for a long time but chose to do nothing because it wasn't clear how this would all play out and eventually effect them. Exactly the same way they handled the (regular) popup 'problem'. They were willing to sacrifice their customers short term benefit (no popup blocker in IE, no decent protection from and control of programs running under Windows) for their potential long term benefit (they have significant investments in online properties with massive potential advertising revenue, and they have a vested interest in limiting your control of your own computer). Both turned out badly for them (customer outrage + Firefox/Linux vs. no apparent gains leaving things the way they are), so they finally introduced a popup blocker in IE (a reasonable move), but instead of improving security and program control under Windows (a daunting task), they're playing on the public's shortsightedness and misplaced outrage to legislate away a problem that they created, they've manipulated us (through our government) into fixing their problem.
Have you ever heard the expression 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'? Malware was driving people to Firefox in droves. Aggressive malware had the potential to *trash* the entire Windows world, but could *never* touch Linux (the weak Unix security model being enough to kept it at bay). I'm not defending the malware authors, yes, they're greedy bastards intent on making a money any way they can... but they were doing it at the expense of your *enemy*! A powerful anti-competitive monopolistic enemy that has more resources that most governments and has to potential to live for hundreds of years! It's no coincidence that Microsoft is the major force driving this legislation (and of course Ebay because of affiliate referral fraud - but that too could and should be handled elsewhere). The broad sweeping nature of this legislation should have been the first clue that something was amis (and I won't even touch the eroding of civil liberties aspect to such broad and vague wording which leaves everything open to interpretation). Without it (a law in one state is enough to severely hamper the adware industry), Microsoft would have been forced to either innovate (imagine having per program control/permissions so fine grained and reliable that you could run random trash programs off the internet with no fear or risk of what they may do to your system - think ZoneAlarm but for everything), or lose significant market share to Firefox and/or Linux, etc.. (of course OS X, Opera, and whatever else is on the way).
But no... malware annoys you now, so you want to see the malware authors ass raped today!
You're so hard on the people that annoy you (thinking that it's right for the last spam guy to get 3