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Safe Harbor Spells Win For Kaspersky In Malware Case Against Zango

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the hire-good-engineers-instead-of-lawyers dept.

suraj.sun writes to tell us that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of security company Kaspersky in the recent case questioning their classification of Zango software as malware. "The court ruled that Kaspersky Lab, which classified online media company Zango's software as malware and 'protected' users from it accordingly, could not be held liable for any actions it took to manufacture and distribute the technical means to restrict Zango software's access to others, as Kaspersky Lab deemed it 'objectionable material.' Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the Company to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs. In the precedent-setting ruling for the anti-malware industry, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that Kaspersky Lab is a provider of an 'interactive computer service' as defined in the Communications Decency Act of 1996 . Part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states: 'No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of ... any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to [objectionable] material.'"

4 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. What's more disturbing by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We actually need a court precedent for deciding if adding a feature to your program is legal?

    1. Re:What's more disturbing by blueg3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Courts deciding whether we can add features to programs is nonsense.

      Of course, I might be biased. I just added an undocumented feature to our popular medical records management software that allows doctors to access patients' medical records over the Internet. Encryption and access restrictions work just fine, I think, provided the software is configured properly...

    2. Re:What's more disturbing by Crazy+Wolverine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think even more alarming is the fact that Zango didn't get laughed out of the courtroom, and that this case made it all the way to the 9th circuit court of appeals. Back when they were 180Solutions, they were one of the most notorious adware companies around.

      --
      Hail to the victors baby!
  2. Re:What's next? by FrostDust · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even the most virulent of scumbags deserve their day in court.