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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."
Washington state also outlawed killing sasquatch.
I love the idea that we are making something so irritating illegal in the strick legal sense of the word. Make no mistake, I hate Spyware.
At least I think I hate Spyware. I am not really sure, given the broad definition. Some Spyware is good, based solely on MY definition of 'good' and the mood I am in. So what if I have to give up something 'good' because the purveyors of that 'good' thing felt it might fit into the broad definition of Spyware and thusly discontinued it. I lose.
On the other hand, the creepy porn junk and the crud that wants my bank account so they can sell me into slavery in Korea definitely (again, in MY definition of...) fit the model of BAD Spyware and need to have its purveyors captured, subjected to Janet Jackson Videos and sent to prison for a long time. And thus begs the question:
How does this law get that done? Certainly these guys aren't going to stop their nonsense, they are making money doing it, so we will HAVE to enforce this law to get them to stop, and if they don't stop because there is no good way to enforce this law, then the BAD stuff continues and the GOOD stuff is thwarted.
I am just not sure about this one.
I suppose it gives teeth to companies like Microsoft and EBay to go after these guys and have them bundled away. That is good. But Who decides which ones Microsoft and EBay go after? And do I really want to create a system whereby Microsoft and EBay are the US Marshals and are enforcing laws the way they see fit, and going after those criminals that they decide to go after?
I'm just not sure about this one.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
We were also one of the first to make spam illegal. I don't really think it has helped all that much...
As far as I'm concerned, start arresting them all. I don't want their sh!tware on my box. I want their stuff to sit there nice and quiet up until the moment I want it to do something, and then I want it to do nothing extra. I don't want a pop-up "toolbox" to fix my printer; I don't want a noisy "Lookie what I printed for you, John, aren't you proud of my wonderous inkjets?!" dialog box. And when it's done I want it to get the hell out of my way. Completely. Don't ask me to update, don't leave a tool tray icon behind, don't leave a task running in task manager.
If all this requires sending a few developers to Federal Pound Me In The Ass Prison, all I can say is "don't drop the soap, guys."
John