Safe Harbor Spells Win For Kaspersky In Malware Case Against Zango 93
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ScuttleMonkey
from the hire-good-engineers-instead-of-lawyers dept.
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.'"
Re:As long... (Score:4, Interesting)
For once, a market solution works.
Kind of reminds me of when AVG [slashdot.org] started to play by different rules. The users were vocal and loud; AVG got the picture and fixed their problems.
It's a shame that we need courts to affirm common sense.
Re:Didn't know what Zango was (Score:5, Interesting)
ISPs can now block ads (Score:5, Interesting)
This expands the "safe harbor" of the CDA to cover ad-blockers. Now, ISP's can offer ad removal as a service. Corporate firewalls can provide ad-blocking. This would cut web traffic way down and speed up browsing.
Re:What's more disturbing (Score:3, Interesting)
We actually need a court precedent for deciding if adding a feature to your program is legal?
Well, the court was deciding if Kaspersky was illegally interfering with Zango's business and customers. That's been a role of teh court in the US for a long time. You can be held liable for interfering with someone else's business; the flip side of this is if someone's software blocked you from installing a competitors or accessing their web pages, even if you wanted to use the competitor product as well.
And to stave off the inevitable "but Zango is evil and so deserved it..." responses:
Yes, and I think the court was correct in let Kaspersky block them; however,
simply because we may not like a business model does not mean that it should be illegal or that others should automatically be allowed to interfere with it.
That's why, to my non-legal eye, I don't like that this appears to be a rather narrow decision hinging on specific application of a statute; it does appear to open the door to more egarious behavior by others. For example, could a computer manufacturer block installation of any products it wants under the guise of being an "interactive service provider" by having a machine phone home to get an OK to install?
Should Apple be allowed to block iPhone apps it deems offensive from working an an iPhone that's been jail-broken??
Re:Didn't know what Zango was (Score:2, Interesting)
It wouldn't have mattered. Most commercial anti-virus packages didn't remove Hotbar and its ilk. That is the entire point of the article. Someone (Kaspersky) had the balls to block this scumware and got sued for the trouble. They won, which is great for the anti-viruses of the world, but it's only at this point the malware is being exposed for what it is.
By simply having anti-virus software before, it wouldn't stop this crap from happening. I truly believe that having an antivirus package is only going to give you 50% security on a Windows based system. You'll get 30% more protection with a full internet security package incorporating an antivirus/antispyware/firewall. You'll get 10% more security by not using Internet Exploiter. That leaves 10% that you just can't protect yourself from. I think it's a fair assessment, though many would disagree.