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Adware Related To Web Sites Ruled Legal
Cobb writes "The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that it is legal for adware programs to show you pop ups for knock-offs and rivals when you visit a companies website. 'In 1-800 Contacts's lawsuit against adware provider WhenU.com, the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.'"
Oh? You would prefer a ruling that made it illegal for you to control how and what content is displayed on your computer?
Legal precedent, Zonk. We don't get to choose our litigants, just the legal principles we'd like to see enthroned.
"the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products."
More like putting generic competitors in front of brand name products preventing you from reaching the product you want until you move the competing product aside.
Really, if come company really wants to get me to dislike them and not buy their product, just put annoying pop-ups on my screen in front of what I was looking at. Pissing me off really makes me want to buy something
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
It's more like me going into a shop and standing by a counter and offering better prices to the customers in that shop. I'm sure I'd get chucked out by security pretty quickly.
Do the users know they're getting this adware junk on their machines? If the adware was installed without the user's informed consent, then this is the problem. What the adware is actually doing on the computer is less of a problem. Who knows, maybe some users WANT competitive comparisons to pop up. Think of what a Froogle Toolbar widget would be like.
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I should not have to dig through an install list to see if there is *anything* hidden in there. Especially anything that dials home and tells on me. If I'm downloading X, all I want is X. Period.
Screw thinking that trademark infringement is shitty- Installing a program secretely and going to great lengths to make it a bitch to remove, now that is shitty!
The court didn't have a lot of choice. WhenU was saying that the user authorized the software and it's the user's computer to do what they want. We all know intuitively that's bullshit, but the court needs evidence. If 1-800-Contacts didn't provide (enough) evidence of users having WhenU on their system without knowledge or consent then the ruling pretty much had to be for WhenU.
'In 1-800 Contacts's lawsuit against adware provider WhenU.com, the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.'
That's bull. Ads for a competitor produced by a 3rd party on any site is more like walking into a Burger King and seeing McDonalds ads plastered all over. In the physical world, managers have the power to deny any 3rd party advertising on their premesis, and can remove any posters/flyers/whatever not explicitly approved from their property. Why is cyberspace any different? WhenU is a 3rd party, hired by a competitor to produce advertising when users enter a target site. Said site has no defense, or no method of blocking/taking down the ads, as the pop-ups are generated client side. How does that make any sort of logical sense- that anyone can advertise whatever they want as a pop-up on any given site?
Generally, when I visit a particular company's website, I'm interested in that company's products, not alternatives or knock-offs. If I were looking for "similar" products, I'd hit a search engine and search for "generic product X" rather than "brand name product X."
When a piece of adware decides to popup an ad isn't the concern of the majority of people, its the fact that it's on the machine in the first place. How it got there should be the focus of legality, not whether it shows an ad for McAfee when visiting Symantecs website.
What it means is that when someone's malicious software directs you to a competitor's site, that's no worse than having that software on board in the first place.
This could actually be good, because it may help when companies try and use similar law to deflect criticism and commentary.
As annoying as adware is, this is a great ruling because it's a step toward protecting the right to modify sites' content on the client side generally. For example there are Greasemonkyey scripts that do similar things, such as post B&N prices next to Amazon ones. Content providers would love to ban anything that modifies the way pages are shown, so I think we're obligated to side with the adware vendor on this one. How they got the adware on people's computers is another matter entirely.
Now, spyware which installs itself on your computer and changes pages for you/displays ads is bad. But it would be terrible if we got a ruling saying that people aren't allowed to decide how pages display in their own browser.
If someone installs a piece of software and they are well aware of the fact that it will replace ads on web pages, then fine! It's up to the user.
What we need to deal with is software which tricks the user into installing ot, or which installs itself through the use of security flaws and similar things.
Also, replacing ads on sites is nothing like McDonald's replacing Burger King's posters with their own in a Burger King restaurant. Burger King is Burger King's property, remember? Like the browser on your PC is under your control? I would be more like McDonald's giving you glasses that detect Burger King posters and replace them with McDonald's posters in the display in front of your own eyes. In a way, at least :) You chose to put those glasses on, and Burger King has no say in what you choose to look at.
Clever signature text goes here.
There are a lot of spurious comparisons being made here to brick and mortar stores -- basically, "This is as if Burger King went in and put ads up all over a McDonald's." But that comparison is only true if the website owner has some kind of claim to your system.
Think for a moment about where that ruling would take you. For one thing, take that pop-up blocker off your system.
As I said in an anonymous post earlier, you don't get to choose the litigant, just the legal principle you wish enshrined. In this case: bad litigant, good outcome.
To me, this is something of a victory - it says nothing about the legality of malware/spyware (how the adware gets on your machine). However, it does enshrine in law your right to modify how content is displayed once it hits your machine.
Basically, the decision says "it is legal to privately modify the content of a website for your own viewing pleasure". Think of this a a protective legal precedent for screenscraping, GreaseMonkey, etc, etc, etc.
Now, we know that adware is usually installed without educated user permission, but that's an entirely different case. We've been given the permission to (at least privately) modify/remix/mash-up content. Now all we need is to make covertly installing adware against the law and the law will have at last got this/these issue(s) right.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
As i see it this has nothing to do with the site that has popup's being shown on it.
Just as is i could choose to switch of the site background color in MY browser, or open a second browser window showing a competitors site, or setup a sript to popup a window saying "Armidillo" whenever i open a webpage. Then this is purly my choice as it is my computer.
Now if i have willingly installed some software that does the same thing, or opens some popup advert, again MY computer, i can do what i want.
This is in effect what i see this ruling as.
Now the issue of whether the user has really given informed concent for this particular piece of software may be a completely different issue, and outside this ruleing (after all was in the eula oyou agreed to, however dubious asuch a thing may be).
For the analogies being used, if i want to wear a hat that whenever i look at a a house of a judge detects it, an card or heald out before my eye saying "American Justice Sucks", purly my choice as it only affect me, and i can choosen to install that hat on my head.....
This ruling is not a ruling for malware and spyware. It's a ruling that says that you can do what you wish with YOUR OWN computer.
Clever signature text goes here.