Comments on: Research: Spyware industry worth billions

Webroot's report on the spyware epidemic indicates that the malicious applications are attracting a growing share of online ad spending.

[wbenton]

I don't really buy this.

If there were such a clear awareness, the numbers of 88% and 87% respectively for PC's with spyware on them wouldn't be this high.

Thus the clear awareness must be referring to some kind of transparent or translucent ordeal which most people don't see and/or don't understand the importance of the dangers involoved with spyware.

Walt

[wbenton]

I don't really buy this.

If there were such a clear awareness, the numbers of 88% and 87% respectively for PC's with spyware on them wouldn't be this high.

Thus the clear awareness must be referring to some kind of transparent or translucent ordeal which most people don't see and/or don't understand the importance of the dangers involoved with spyware.

Walt

[Transaction7]

$2 Billion Spyware Income - Lots of Luck Getting Reform

A straight up and down vote of the voters, Congress members' employers, on banning spyware and substantially regulating and curtailing adware, on teh ballot at the next election, would pass overwhelmingly in every state, among conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, and pizza lovers. If these employees of ours, of either or both parties, gave a hoot about mere votrers, their employers, spyware and other invasions of personal and business privacy on line, and thus most adware as well, would long since have been outlawed subject to massive corporate fines and prison time for rthe individual culprits.

I'm a right-wing conservative Republican, and my liberal Democratic friends agree entirely with me on this. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle (which too ofrten seems like a no-man's land guarded by barbed wire, land mines, and a shooting war these days) voted for have touted their computer privacy, anti-spam, and anti-syyware bills, passed and currently sponsored.

My old law school dean liked to quote Will Rogers' comment that every time Congress tells a joke, it's a law, and every time they pass a law, it's a joke.

We know that, just like the CAN-SPAM law and HIPPAA directed to protecteing medical privacy, which one of your sister sites recently pointed out has a gaping hole where the on-line storage of medical records by third party companies is concerned, and the bills currenlty pending in Congress, we're never going to get what we mere voters want and desoerve, in this or most other areas, as long as any business that acn be tapped for campaign cash by either parties can make billions by writing these laws so the politicians can brag they passed a nice-sounding bill while the bad guys get to write it and it is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese and very unfair to those it was supposed to protect.

Not everything that adds to or does not subtrract from the bottom line of some business entity and actual or potential campaign contributor qualifies as conservative the way most of us mere voters define the term. After all, that can easily be said of con artists and child pornographers.

We conservatives, and a lot of our liberal firends, both of whom are concerned about the First Amendment, or what the Supreme Court seems to think it says and means these days, which is something else altogether, both recognize a distinction between content-based and non-contact-based regulation of communications. How the First Amendment ever got stretched [not unlike the
way the Tenth Amendment got stretched beyond all recognition earlier] to cover commercial sexual conduct, or invasions into our homes and offices including altering the contents of our computers, the modern equivalent of the "persons, papers and effects" protected by the Fourth Amendment and burglary laws, etc., remains a mystery. The Supreme Court says lawyer ads can be strictly regulated and burdened with proor-approval fees and review, and lawyers don't usually come into your home or office and change your computer's inner workings or content. You may have a right to try to sell me on some lousy political or economic idea, or some no-account product or service, but who do they think has a right to invade my home and office computer surreptitiously to do so.

A lawyer with 35 years' experience, I do not think the courts should, or should be permitted to, uphold half the garbage in software licenses, including licenses to install pop-up and pop-over ads, much less adware and spyware that hihacks my computer and violates my clients' and my privacy.

Don't tell me the problem is that this stuff crosses national and state borders, either. Customs enforcement has been a virtual exception from Fourth Amendment search restrictions since the first Congress, and the Supreme Court has held that growing a bushel of wheat to feed to your own cow on a family farm, or putting a bottle of ketchup on the table at a local barbeque joint, is interstate commerce subject to pervasive federal regulation. You don't ahve to go anywhere near that far to regulate something that, instead of stopping at my snail mail box, enters my home and the seat of my expressed thoughts.

When will Congress start at least listening to (a) computer experts and, horror of horrors (b), mere voters?

[Transaction7]

$2 Billion Spyware Income - Lots of Luck Getting Reform

A straight up and down vote of the voters, Congress members' employers, on banning spyware and substantially regulating and curtailing adware, on teh ballot at the next election, would pass overwhelmingly in every state, among conservatives, liberals, Republicans, Democrats, and pizza lovers. If these employees of ours, of either or both parties, gave a hoot about mere votrers, their employers, spyware and other invasions of personal and business privacy on line, and thus most adware as well, would long since have been outlawed subject to massive corporate fines and prison time for rthe individual culprits.

I'm a right-wing conservative Republican, and my liberal Democratic friends agree entirely with me on this. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle (which too ofrten seems like a no-man's land guarded by barbed wire, land mines, and a shooting war these days) voted for have touted their computer privacy, anti-spam, and anti-syyware bills, passed and currently sponsored.

My old law school dean liked to quote Will Rogers' comment that every time Congress tells a joke, it's a law, and every time they pass a law, it's a joke.

We know that, just like the CAN-SPAM law and HIPPAA directed to protecteing medical privacy, which one of your sister sites recently pointed out has a gaping hole where the on-line storage of medical records by third party companies is concerned, and the bills currenlty pending in Congress, we're never going to get what we mere voters want and desoerve, in this or most other areas, as long as any business that acn be tapped for campaign cash by either parties can make billions by writing these laws so the politicians can brag they passed a nice-sounding bill while the bad guys get to write it and it is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese and very unfair to those it was supposed to protect.

Not everything that adds to or does not subtrract from the bottom line of some business entity and actual or potential campaign contributor qualifies as conservative the way most of us mere voters define the term. After all, that can easily be said of con artists and child pornographers.

We conservatives, and a lot of our liberal firends, both of whom are concerned about the First Amendment, or what the Supreme Court seems to think it says and means these days, which is something else altogether, both recognize a distinction between content-based and non-contact-based regulation of communications. How the First Amendment ever got stretched [not unlike the
way the Tenth Amendment got stretched beyond all recognition earlier] to cover commercial sexual conduct, or invasions into our homes and offices including altering the contents of our computers, the modern equivalent of the "persons, papers and effects" protected by the Fourth Amendment and burglary laws, etc., remains a mystery. The Supreme Court says lawyer ads can be strictly regulated and burdened with proor-approval fees and review, and lawyers don't usually come into your home or office and change your computer's inner workings or content. You may have a right to try to sell me on some lousy political or economic idea, or some no-account product or service, but who do they think has a right to invade my home and office computer surreptitiously to do so.

A lawyer with 35 years' experience, I do not think the courts should, or should be permitted to, uphold half the garbage in software licenses, including licenses to install pop-up and pop-over ads, much less adware and spyware that hihacks my computer and violates my clients' and my privacy.

Don't tell me the problem is that this stuff crosses national and state borders, either. Customs enforcement has been a virtual exception from Fourth Amendment search restrictions since the first Congress, and the Supreme Court has held that growing a bushel of wheat to feed to your own cow on a family farm, or putting a bottle of ketchup on the table at a local barbeque joint, is interstate commerce subject to pervasive federal regulation. You don't ahve to go anywhere near that far to regulate something that, instead of stopping at my snail mail box, enters my home and the seat of my expressed thoughts.

When will Congress start at least listening to (a) computer experts and, horror of horrors (b), mere voters?

[carltornell]

There is no such thing as a free lunch

I often find the discussion on spyware and adware rather naive. People who dislike these phenomenons often like everyhing on the Internet to be free. Now, like Milton Friedman pointed out, nothing is for free: somebody eventually pays even for a free lunch. Unfortunately, the truth is that so much is free on the Internet because it is paid for by, correct, ads. What should programmers eat and drink if they didn't get paid somehow. Therefore, we should rather find a way to work with an acceptebable form of spyware and adware. If we manage to get rid of it, we'll get rid of the freeware as well.

[carltornell]

There is no such thing as a free lunch

I often find the discussion on spyware and adware rather naive. People who dislike these phenomenons often like everyhing on the Internet to be free. Now, like Milton Friedman pointed out, nothing is for free: somebody eventually pays even for a free lunch. Unfortunately, the truth is that so much is free on the Internet because it is paid for by, correct, ads. What should programmers eat and drink if they didn't get paid somehow. Therefore, we should rather find a way to work with an acceptebable form of spyware and adware. If we manage to get rid of it, we'll get rid of the freeware as well.