FTC wants to hit the spyware guys where it hurts The Federal Trade Commission told a US Senate committee it could bring new vigor to the fight against spyware by making spyware purveyors pay civil penalties. Under current statutes, the federal watchdog agency can file lawsuits in spyware cases that seek court orders and monetary fines for ill-gotten gains, but not for …
If it follows the example of the anti spam legislation the states get it right, then the federal government totally screws it up by claiming full authority, negating the state laws, and implementing some toothless bill that ends up legitimizing the spyware as long as they stamp a disclaimer on it and agree to remove you from their botnet, if and only if you specifically opt out of that particular network. But you will be quickly added to Botnet.RevB because you have not yet opted out of that one.
A quick rule of thumb is that any bill crafted with a catchy name will almost always do the opposite of what it claims.
Phorm have form as 121Media, peddlers of forced advertising rootkits. NebuAd have a close association with Gator/Claria/Gain as spyware and they're OK?
Shame the FTC didn't get round to this before. Still better late than never. Now for their definition of spyware.
Why not define a comittee, that can independently maintain a definition of spyware, spam, spit,and other forms of computer, electrinics, and telecomunicaions abuses in the legislation so that the law does not need to be rewritten to make minor definition changes? This is done in other segments of law, and in many countries. The law only needs to spell out the creation of said comittee or department, or a even a subcomittee of an existing group (like the CIA, who has umbrella like oversight of much to do with communication prosecution), spell out the punishments, and spell out powers and due process. It does not need to define specifics.
The DMCA could have been structured much the same, and we would not be in such a shitstorm now if it had.
It should be noted that the Controlled Substances Act works in a similar way, classifying controlled substances by "Schedules" and allowing these schedules to be amended without the need for a full Bill. However, any attempt to create a new committee to handle this will immediately get "Bureaucracy" and "Pork Barrel" labels stuck on it in an age where the federal debt is growing alarmingly high (and interests are being held by hostile powers) and the economy isn't in the best of shape, so it's lose-lose.
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