New U.S. 'antispyware' bill invites fight with Net firms
A new Senate bill is likely to vex Internet companies and advertisers, which have been warning for years that supposedly 'antispyware' proposals could impose problematic regulations on legitimate businesses.
Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat, said in a statement Thursday: "The industry has failed in self-regulating. It's time to step in and enact serious consequences against those who use this invasive and deceptive practice."
Sen. Mark Pryor
(Credit: U.S. Senate)Y'all remember how well that worked with spam, right?
Anyway, the reason this idea is likely to estrange Net companies is that it includes 34 pages of detailed and often-ambiguous regulations that must be followed precisely--on pain of facing civil and criminal penalties.
That's similar to a House of Representatives bill approved by a 368-48 vote this month that is now in the hands of the Senate. It was opposed by American Bankers Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Information Technology Association of America, and NetCoalition (which counts Yahoo, Google, and News.com publisher CNET Networks as members).
Some highlights from Pryor's proposal:
* Under existing law, "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" are already unlawful. This bill would add a duplicative additional prohibition outlawing the installation of software "through unfair or deceptive acts or practices." (The reason it's duplicative is that if all forms of unfair acts already are unlawful, a subset must be as well.)
* It says that an unauthorized user may not seize control of a computer and enlist it as a spam zombie spewing out bulk e-mail. Modem hijacking, denial of service attacks, and "endless" pop-up advertisements are also outlawed.
* Brower settings can't be altered through "unfair or deceptive mean." Specifically, default home pages, Web proxies, bookmarks, security settings and toolbars can't be tinkered with.
* Software must be able to be uninstalled and disabled through "reasonable efforts." Changing the name or location of software to thwart removal attempts is outlawed, as is requiring a special code or additional program to remove the application.
* Any ads displayed through software must also show the "identity or name" of the program that "caused the advertisement to appear." Ad-displaying software must be easy to eradicate through a "clear and conspicuous hypertext link." (This seems to be a way to target companies like Gator, now called Claria, which has been dubbed spyware and came bundled with popular, supposedly free software.)
Pryor's legislation, called the Counter Spy Act of 2007, is co-sponsored by Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan.
hope the poor wording is the part of the author and not our
representatives.
I think the bill is a good idea though, but a better idea would be
to enforce our existing laws as against internet companies who
install spyware. At the end of the day, the author is very right,
while this bill specifies the properties of spyware, the bill is
unnecessary to prosecute the purveyors of spyware.
USA laws against INTERNET spammers etc is nice but pure PR and 99% ineffective. The internet is not designed for the elimination of spam and problem web sites.
It will continue no matter how many USA laws you pass.
The internet is atually designed for predators who want to remain anonyomus.
making 'local' laws again negative internet web sites and predators is funny and really useless, but nice PR for sure
As far as Net Firms, BOO-HOO. If you can't make profit without hijacking systems then you don't have a legitimate reason to be providing content or net access.
I scrolled up and -- sure enough -- the arch-conservative hack who misreported the "Al Gore invented the Internet" myth had his name all over it.
Note to CNet any anybody else: anything written by Declan should be conspicuously labeled as "OPINION" so it can be treated with a grain of salt by readers.
Spyware starts out on a bad premise from a privacy and individual rights perspective - if anything needed regulated on the 'net, this is it.
These people who think their printer software demands to have internet communication.
Reading software tools
Printer software tools
Gaming software and more are all hogging up my banwidth! I even disabled live update and windows update. No! you can not connect fot any reason!
There needs to be a punkbusters for windwows that protects the OS like it does for gamers.
lawmakers who know nothing about computers from voting on
bills dealing with computer matters. :-)
On second thought that would not work as where would they
find a quorum when it came time to vote...
On third thought that might be the whole point of the
matter. :-)
Don't ever forget that the internet used to be a DOD network, it was secure, until MS got their grubby hands all over it. Access was read-only for anonymous users (or rejected entirely), and no material read from a remote source was ever executed as code without the users direct command, and outside the browser environment. You could not create a link that appeared to be one address, that sent you somewhere else, there was no such thing as a popup. These are all deviations from the original secure spec, brought to you by MS. Remember the Netscape-IE battle? MS won and we all lost!!!
The Patriot Act -- which passed easily because no one in Congress apparently read it.
And what of Bush 'signings' to passed laws that no one even notices: unitary executive control of martial law and suspension of habeas corpus domestically.
Or go way back to the implementation of the Federal Reserve System and the IRS -- both private corporations. Happy with those?
Healthcare for Americans? "No child left behind"? Maybe it should be no child properly educated under federal mandate. Et cetera.
Mark Twain once wrote something along the lines of "Parts of horses sent to Washington for final assembly." That's Congress, a fine group of 19th century thinkers who can't cope with the 21st century.
We do have a real spyware problem in this country, they call it the NSA. And I don't think this trash bill will address that little problem.