Court Slams Door On Sale of Spyware

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC's complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email."

Comments

Re:but why?

[pseudonomous]

Ultimately, hopefully, the issue which will get the defendants in trouble will not be that they sold the keylogger software OR that they provided tutorials on how to trojan it into unwitting victims computers, but rather that THEY stored illegally obtained software on THIER server. Otherwise, this sets a dangerous precident where someone decides that software which potentially has valid uses, is declared illegal. (It's convoluted but you can imagine a case where someone might have a legitimate use for using keylogger software) It's like the whole "right to bear arms thing", just becuase someone shoots his neighbor doesn't mean guns should be illegal. (they should be, IMO, but this isn't the reason)