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Spyware Maker Sues Anti-Spyware Maker
prostoalex writes "An 'online media company' Zango, which gained notoriety for redirecting adult affiliate traffic and the first ever MySpace worm, is now suing the anti-spyware vendor PC Tools, maker of an application called 'Spyware Doctor', for removing Zango applications off the consumers' PCs. 'According to a posting on a blog called Spamnotes.com, Zango is seeking at least $35 million in damages, alleging that Spyware Doctor removes Zango's software without warning users that it will be deleted. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in King County Superior Court in Seattle, according to Spamnotes.com. Formerly known as 180solutions, Zango is trying to clean up its tarnished reputation. In November it paid $3 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission charges that its software was being installed deceptively on PCs.'"
This is like Osama Bin Laden filing a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C. alleging that George W. Bush is interfering with Bin Laden's rights to advance the agenda of fundamentalist Islam and kill innocent Americans.
I dare say there will be a fair few jokes made along the lines of "that's like Jeffrey Dahmer suing young boys for being so delectable and tasty", but I think that misses the point that this issue highlights - that all lawyers should be put in a shuttle and sent directly into the centre of the sun.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
For the same reason censorship and copyright enforcement is hard on the Internet, apparently killing spam, scam, phishing and spyware companies is quite much harder than their "real life" equivalents.
(Internet spanning the whole globe, while the laws aren't, decentralization, anonymity, vague and undetermined terminology and legal status of various online activities etc.)
You gotta know though, this is all going on because the Internet is so young. If the beaurocrats in the various countries get their act together, in 30-40 years such abnormalities as a spyware distirbutor suing antispyware distributor will be for all practical purposes, impossible. But it will also mean we may need to fill a bunch of forms and go through a series of expensive tests before publishing software and sites on the Internet.
The signs of this are already coming from Microsoft where you need to signs your exe files for "authenticity", and "comspulsory" game rating requirement of Vista, and the more expensive "trustworthy" certificates initiative that the major browser makers are engaged into.
This is the problem with well-meaning regulations.
Spyware was bad and evil because it installed itself without consent. No notice! No agreement!
So, those things were made illegal--now you have to get consent to install things.
The problem here is that consent and notice are not terribly strong protections. Hey, read that EULA! This person acknowledged and agreed to install this software. And they were notified (probably confusingly) that it was along for the ride.
Most modern adware just barely follows the rules. Technically, they comply, but they're still mostly installed by people who don't understand what they're getting and don't want it.
But since they're "legal," they can claim "we're not malware! We comply with all regulations. We provide a service people apparently want and consented to. It's removing us that's the violation." And, by the letter of the law, they're right.
I hate to mention this, but isn't there a provision of the DMCA that they can claim that removal tools violates? Circumvention or some such?
I'm not even remotely suggesting that I agree with the lawsuit, and I fervently hope they get countersued out of business. But I am suggesting that it's possible they have a real claim under the screwed up IP laws in this country. I wonder if this isn't one of those lawsuits that may ultimately end up with a desperately needed revision of those laws. It's really too much to hope for, I suppose.
(Although, on a side note, a little bit of me notes that they don't make unix os type products. Thus they do, sort of left handedly, support OS's I'm fond of.)
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Recently I has the misfortune to come accross Zango (was looking for a video codec) I'm running a Vista PC so Zango refused to install and yet windows defender still picked up the three applications it installed on my system. These three programs were left on ther system after Zango had informed me it can't install. Spybot identified two of the applications as Adware and the final as Malware.
When your programs isntallation puts three unwanted applications on a PC even when it fails to install causing a owner to install a Anti-virus package because their concerned with what else it might have put on there then your company doesn't have a reputation worth anything and if Spybot, Microsoft and every AV/Anti-Spyware company wants to black list you power to them.
Oh this was yesterday afternoon and while I don't keep A/V software running I'm very pro firewalls
...Zango is in [the] right, and Spyware Doctor should at least [give] notice [of] what it is doing to its users.Spyware Doctor does give notice of what it does: it removes software that its developers judge to be spyware. If the user opines that the tool comes up with too many false positives, then they may uninstall it at any time and use any of several other tools out there.
If you believe that there has been a false positive here, then write to the developers to suggest they change it. But don't support frivolous lawsuits.