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Microsoft Sued Over WGA
Hope Thelps writes "The Seattle PI is reporting on a lawsuit being brought against Microsoft in response to their WGA spyware. Groklaw is also covering the story. Although there are a lot of similarities to Sony's rootkit, the actual harm done is less concrete. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out."
Sued by the same moneymonger who sued Sony.
whoopie, M$ loses and donates another $1,000,000.00 worth of software to some high school system or third world country as retribution (at a cost of about 35 cents to the evil empire).
win or lose this will deter Microsoft from using wga to shut down any unlicensed (or otherwise) computers...for a while at least.
In the case of Windows Updates, I would argue that it is even more out of the user's control. For alot of malware, you have to click "yes install" at some point. For Windows Updates, the recommended state is to "automatically download and install in the background." In theory a user could examine each and every update to figure out what they all do, but in practise the actual purpose of each update is heavily obfuscated. Worse yet, in the case of WGA, once you allow it to install (it seems innocent enough at first), it is used against you to force further installations.
Frankly the tactic Microsoft is using in their updates is not ethical. Everyone is told to do their Windows Updates (for security reasons), and Microsoft is exploiting this to slip in some other software that the user does not necessarily need. Worse yet, this software sends back information to Microsoft HQ without user permission. If this does not count as spyware, I don't know what does.
I hope this lawsuit makes Microsoft wake up to the illegitimacy of their tactics.
1. WGA communicates with Microsoft HQ. The information transferred may or may not be 'sensitive' but this could be considered an invasion of privacy.
2. Any program that uses up system ressources without performing a task explicitly requested by the user is harmful in the sense that it slows down the computer. This is one of the main complaints with spyware/adware: they slow down your computer for no purpose (or at least no purpose that you, the user, are interested in).
3. WGA appears to effectively give someone else (specifically Microsoft) control over your machine (for instance the recently announced "remote shutoff" function). To the user, a program that limits their control of the computer (and gives someone else more control) is harmful. Note that the argument "but Microsoft would only shut off illegitimate versions of Windows" doesn't make any difference. Even if that's true, there is still a loss of control for the user. This is harmful to the user.
To the same extent that any other piece of so-called "spyware" is harmful (installed in a tricky way; sends info back to some company; wastes CPU cycles and disk space; etc.), WGA should also be considered "harmful."
The problem with WGA is that is not an update, security-patch, or feature upgrade. It does *nothing* for the user, and only installs in order to give Microsoft more control/leverage over your machine. From the user perspective, it is a net negative, hence harmful.
What peeves people so much about WGA is that MS pushed it out as a Critical Update, meaning that all machines with Auto Update install it without prompting. It is undeniably not a critical security update and to make matters worse it phones home. After taking some heat, MS then conceded that the installation of WGA will be optional (if by optional you mean selectively blocking some non-critical updates). It's still being pushed, but you don't have to install it. For those of you with your less than legit copies worried about not receiving updates, you can always download third-party update packs if you don't mind a bit of a delay. Not necessarily a bad thing considering that MS has been known for having to patch their patches. I'm not an MS fan, but not a huge hater. Just a strategically stupid time to ramp up WGA after the whole rootkit fiasco. I'm not an MS fan, but not a huge hater. Just a strategicly stupid time to ramp up WGA after the whole rootkit fiasco.
In other words, false positives. Also, doesn't it phone home every day or something? You'd think you'd only need to check once.
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Good end evil don't come into it.
Unacceptable behaviour isn't justified by saying that the perpetrator was acting in his own best interests rather than out of a desire to hurt people.
If the electricity company thinks I'm fiddling the meter to get out of paying them what I should then there are some acts that are acceptable for them to resolve that and some that aren't. I'd say that entering my premises on the pretext of fixing a dangerous defect in the system and while they're here hiding a camera that relays images to them would be unacceptable.
You may well not like the analogy or you may draw the line of acceptable versus unacceptable at a different point to me, but either way the issue isn't resolved by saying that they're not evil and they're just out to protect their own interests. We have to make judgments on what is and isn't acceptable in pursuit of those interests.
To me, Microsoft have gone way over the line. You may disagree. But don't try to reduce it to a comic book battle of good versus evil and then accuse me of calling them evil.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2