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Cingular, Others Fined For Using Adware
amigoro writes "Cingular, Priceline, and Travelocity have been fined for using adware by the New York Attorney General. The companies will each pay $30K to $35K as penalties and investigatory costs. More importantly, the companies agreed to a series of restrictions and best practices that, while they make eminent sense to consumers, will be loathsome to businesses accustomed to having their way with our computers."
If it was more than 30-35K, this is only a cost of doing business.
The real fault is jointly that of the OS and consumer. Allowing software with unkown ramifications is painfully stupid. If your computer is taken over by adware because you habitually just click "Ok" instead of thinking makes you deserve some of what you get.
I'm fine with penalizing companies that do bad things, but they're always going to be out there trying to find some way to shove their ad in your face. It's the same problem we see with spam, you can't stop the spammers, the only way to dramatically improve the situation is to change the behavior of the recipients.
The bigger fault is comptuer operating systems that allow software to make significant changes to the functionality of the system in adverse ways without making it clear that this kind of change is coming.
With my OS, I have to log in a root (and I'm reminded that it is a bad idea) every time in order to make those kind of changes. I appreciate the convenience of root/administrator but everything I need to do normally shouldn't and doesn't require that kind of access. That doesn't mean that my operating system is superior (although I believe it is better) it just means that the designers didn't expect me to need to trade convenience for safety. I seriously doubt users of Unix like systems have suffered from this.
I know it isn't going to happen, but I would have thought this was the best possible response if Microsoft (blind assumption but educated guess) was fined $30 for each affected system and each consumer who did something negligent was fined the same.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I wonder if lessons were learned from the HP affair? Now making your contractors and subcontractors be ethical is good. This is like the seat belt law here in Wisconsin. If a car full gets pulled over and none have their belts on, the driver will only find moths left their wallet after the fines are paid. It is about time and, plus, I have absolutely no symphathy for Cingular/Southern Boys Club/Another Terrible Telephone at all - they deserved the leash. The fine is chump pocket change. Now I wonder what will happen when they inevitably screw up and the leash is pulled back hard. Now that is the question.
You don't have to go any father than talk radio or Fox news to see daily exercise of the over sized counter weight of republican slander of the Democratic party, hell, it's even a long standing talking point to mis-pronounce it.
I find it amusing that whenever someone on this board 'stands up' for the Republican party, they always insist that they are, and forever have been independent, or Libertarian. I cannot recall one person on any discussion who claims to be an active loyal Republican. Anyone with an well used account want to stand up and admit not only being Republican, but an active supporter of at least their party leadership if not the Bush administration?
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
They're not mutually exclusive, they're simply non-continuous. Those two groups you described are two of the major groups in the Republican party. That's like saying black people and Jewish people are mutually exclusive stereotypes of the Democratic party.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
Correct you are.
Care about privacy? Read this!
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
But it seems you missed it. Humans make the bad decisions, not corporations. Those are the people who should be held responsible. Instead, what happens now is that only the corporation is punished, not the guy making decisions, except in rare cases. This has changed somewhat after Enron, but it still isn't the norm. If people were held personally responsible for their uncaring actions, they'd think twice before blindly following the corporate "make profit at all costs" culture.
What you are arguing for is "human-like" punishment of the coporation (which already exists -- they can but shut down, fined, dissolved, etc).