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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.'"
But it had an annoying pop-up, so I left without RTFA.
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
I notice that the case didn't address the legality of adware being installed without a user's full knowledge. I find it humorous, but I have an idea!
They can inform the user that adware is being installed with a pop-up! Everybody reads pop-ups!
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
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.
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.
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