Genuine Advantage lawsuit

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Aleecia M. McDonald" <aleecia () aleecia com>
Date: June 29, 2006 11:31:55 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Genuine Advantage lawsuit

For IP if you wish.

A suit filed in Seattle court claims that Genuine Advantage is  
spyware, and denied users the ability to make informed consent. Note  
the carefully phrased denial from Microsoft:

	"Spyware is deceptive software that is installed on a user's  
computer without the user's consent and has some malicious purpose,"

I've looked at a lot of definitions of spyware, and "some malicious  
purpose" is an interesting addition.

Lauren Weinstein appears to believe that consent is not at issue, but  
rather the degree of damage:

"It doesn't seem to me that this particular incident rises anywhere  
near the kind of damage that is normally associated with spyware,"  
said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet  
Responsibility. "That's not to say that Microsoft should have done it  
the way they did. ... But that doesn't necessarily make it  
illegal." [ellipses in original text]

Full article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/ 
275780_msftsuit29.html?source=mypi

One of my concerns is that, politically, it is difficult to pass  
Federal legislation that bans Microsoft's standard business  
practices. It's been hard enough to approach a working definition of  
spyware (see the good work of CDT's Anti-Spyware Coalition.)  
Codifying what is, or isn't, spyware just got a whole lot more  
difficult.

        Aleecia


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