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Adware Related To Web Sites Ruled Legal 218

Posted by Zonk from the great-just-great dept.
Cobb writes "The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that it is legal for adware programs to show you pop ups for knock-offs and rivals when you visit a companies website. 'In 1-800 Contacts's lawsuit against adware provider WhenU.com, the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.'"
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Adware Related To Web Sites Ruled Legal More

Adware Related To Web Sites Ruled Legal

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  • I Went To The Site (Score:5, Funny)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:54AM (#12960750) Homepage
    But it had an annoying pop-up, so I left without RTFA.
  • How could it be illegal if the servers are in Europe or something?

  • Great! Just great! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:56AM (#12960771)
    from the great-just-great dept.

    Oh? You would prefer a ruling that made it illegal for you to control how and what content is displayed on your computer?

    Legal precedent, Zonk. We don't get to choose our litigants, just the legal principles we'd like to see enthroned.

    • What? This ruling does make it illegal "to control how and what content is displayed on your computer". The legal precedent is that the programmer controls your computer, regardless of what you want, regardless of what they tell you they're going to do. Which ruling did *you* read?
      • Not exactly... the ruling says nothing about how the software made it there in the first place. The ruling was based on the assumption that this kind of software was used by the user's consent.

        This makes sense, as the lawsuit was also brought with that assumption.

        The spyware issue (and the fact that WhenU.com is guilty in that regard) is a completely seperate issue, and one in with "1-800 Contacts" would have little interest.

    • Parse it carefully - it's actually a victory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shaper_pmp ( 825142 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:36AM (#12961161)
      I'm with you on this, AC. This decision doesn't say anything about the legality (or otherwise) of malware - TFA specifically states:

      "Though the case did not directly address consumer frustration over adware, which often gets onto computers without their owners' full knowledge, the court said it viewed WhenU's ads as authorized."


      To me, this is something of a victory - it says nothing about the legality of malware/spyware (how the adware gets on your machine). However, it does enshrine in law your right to modify how content is displayed once it hits your machine.

      Basically, the decision says "it is legal to privately modify the content of a website for your own viewing pleasure". Think of this a a protective legal precedent for screenscraping, GreaseMonkey [mozdev.org], etc, etc, etc.

      Now, we know that adware is usually installed without educated user permission, but that's an entirely different case. We've been given the permission to (at least privately) modify/remix/mash-up content. Now all we need is to make covertly installing adware against the law and the law will have at last got this/these issue(s) right.

  • Do pop-ups successfully sell anything at all? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MECC ( 8478 ) * on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:57AM (#12960776)
    "the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products."

    More like putting generic competitors in front of brand name products preventing you from reaching the product you want until you move the competing product aside.

    Really, if come company really wants to get me to dislike them and not buy their product, just put annoying pop-ups on my screen in front of what I was looking at. Pissing me off really makes me want to buy something

    • Re:Do pop-ups successfully sell anything at all? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by youngerpants ( 255314 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:01AM (#12960832)
      I wish I could mod you up, but just ran out of mod points on the previous article


      I'd take your analogy one step further; its more like walking into a shop and having the generic product thrown in your face. Thats REALLY not going to make me want to shop there


      Like yourself, pissing me off doesn't make me want to shop there; I'll either walk out of the door or just browse to another site


      The difference is, when I shop online, its even easier to go to a competitors store.

    • Pop-ups probably don't sell anything, but they do generate clicks. Note how the advertisers always place popups, popunders, and popovers *exactly* where you're most likely to click by accident. e.g. My browser mysteriously loses focus, so I click to reset the focus so I can scroll. Suddenly a popover appears and I've clicked on it! I quickly close the resulting window, but somebody has already been payed for that click.

      In any case, this ruling is really more about the issue of advertising on competitors sites. This ruling states that I can plug my Spacely's Sprockets product on Cosmo's Cogs website as long as Cosmo has third party advertising of some sort. Now if Cosmo was smart, he'd be using Google Adsense or a similarly featured product. He'd then be able to tell Google that he doesn't want to see my ads for Spacely's Sprockets. All of which violates no ones rights, yet everyone is happy. :-)
      • Slight modification to my example. In the case of WhenU, Cosmo doesn't have a choice because the user has supposedly agreed to view the advertisements. Mr. Cosmo will just have to live with this situation or help fight the legality of adware to install itself on a user's computer (a separate issue from this ruling).

        • While I'd like to see the malware authors screwed at every turn, this ruling actually makes sense, and creates a precedent in the right place.

          Since WhenU's software is installed on the client machine, content is not altered on the 'target' servers. It's only altered before it hits the client. This reminds me of the C&D letters sent from dumbass CEO offices to sites like the 'Dialector', where sites would be translated into a different dialect. Caselaw like this will shut down the threats like these

      • Here's something that may help with accidental clicks: don't use mouse clicks to shift the focus back to your browser window, use a key combination like Alt-Tab (on windows - on Unix, consult your window manager's man page, or use a window manager that never shifts focus automatically).

        Outside of that, be sure to use AdBlock, disable pop-ups and all that - I can't even remember the last time I saw a pop-up on my own computer. :)
        • Here's something that may help with accidental clicks: don't use mouse clicks to shift the focus back to your browser window, use a key combination like Alt-Tab

          Indeed. I've long become wise to the tricks of the advertisers, but that unfortunately doesn't help the average user.

          Outside of that, be sure to use AdBlock, disable pop-ups and all that

          I do disable popups (there's almost zero usefulness for unrequested popup windows), but I don't bother with Ad Blocking software. If a site has overly annoying
          • Oh, then you absolutely should give AdBlock [mozdev.org] (the Mozilla extension) a try. It doesn't block anything by default; it merely allows you to do so yourself by specifying patterns against which objects (images, scripts, iframes etc.) are matched to determine whether they should be blocked or not.

            It's quite handy - you can either block lots of advertising in one sweep by using patterns such as "*/ads/*", or you can be very specific by only blocking - say - "http://www.example.com/ads/*". The granularity really i
    • "the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products."

      This seems a horribly flawed comparison! I guess the court sees the whole internet as the retail store and having competetors around is normal.

      Doesn't it make MUCH more sense in this comparison that the 1-800-contacts website is 1-800-contacts retain store? So a better comparison would be likening WhenU's ads to a competitor breaking into your store and placing thier products in your s
    • Saddly this is a case where the consumers vote with their wallets - and consumers are often uneducated when it comes to shopping online.

      The only reason pop-up adds still exist is because they are making money hand over fist. If the consumers were educated to see that these adds aren't from the vendor they are looking at - and specifically how unethical the Malware/Spyware/Addware companies are - then perhaps... naaaaah, they'd still buy their bigger dangling participles.

    • Re:Do pop-ups successfully sell anything at all? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:06AM (#12960877)
      "Pissing me off really makes me want to buy something"

      When I see something in a popup or spam, it encourages me not to buy it and makes me think of the company as a scam. My opinion of "University of Phoenix Online" could not be lower as they sometimes send me 50 spams a day.

      It is like if Coca Cola decided to do an ad campaign in which they paid the advertisers to drink gallons of Coke and then walk down the streets with fly undone peeing the processed Coke on passersby.

    • Re:Do pop-ups successfully sell anything at all? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rlthomps-1 ( 545290 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:07AM (#12960886) Homepage
      I feel the same way, I don't buy products from pop-ups or companies that advertise via pop-ups

      Sadly, there don't enough of people like us. I'm sure if market research showed that pop-ups had a terribly negative effect on consumers, they would cease to exist.

      My guess is that firms feel that if you see a few pop-ups for a G-22 wireless camera, you might be ticked initially, but that you'll still be able to recall the product in the future. So 3 months from now, you may be in the market for such a camera. You may not remember where you first heard of it, but you know of the product and may very well look into purchasing one.

      Anyone have a link to some sort of research on this topic?
      • It's no help researchwise, but I can say that I've found online advertsing useful precisely twice.

        Once was for a corsair memory upgrade, the other was a megatokyo banner on slashdot.

        Neither was a popup. The effect popup ads have on me is to get me to bar the agency responsible from my computer. Not only do they fail to sell the popup advertised product, they fail to sell me anything else, at least until my next review of my adblocking measures, possibly indefinitely.

        I suppose the interesting thing

      • Re:Do pop-ups successfully sell anything at all? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:41AM (#12961212)
        Sadly, there don't enough of people like us. I'm sure if market research showed that pop-ups had a terribly negative effect on consumers, they would cease to exist.

        I had a guest at my house and I happened to be watching for an issue w/adzapper and squid when I noticed they were surfing sites on my Windows machine upstairs. Curious as to why they were using a Windows machine to surf the net (I have a Mac for that) and which sites they were surfing (fearful of spyware and bullshit) I found they were surfing sites they pulled out of SPAM.

        So, if this guest, who *is* aware of spam, spyware, and trojans was doing it I have a feeling that there are tons more like them.

        On a side note, I brought down the Internet interface and told them to use the Mac instead, "must be a problem with the Windows computer, I'll fix it later." ;)
    • If I ran a shop... and had my range of products on sale and some rival firm came into my store and started putting up adverts for their products inside my store, then I'd be pretty pissed and could get them for trespass... with a website, it's the same thing...
      • How is that the same thing? To correct your analogy, these competitors would have to actually alter the files on the webserver.

        What WhenU is doing doesn't affect anything that the online store owns. Everything takes place on the user's own PC. Unless WhenU has installed the software against the user's wishes, there really isn't anything anyone can do to stop them. The alternative - that website operators *can* dictate how their content is viewed in the browser - has implications for adblocking, usability (
    • Pissing people off seems to generate sales. There's some very annoying phone ringtones at the moment, and part of the advertising seems to be noisy web ads.

  • Not the same (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhilHibbs ( 4537 ) <snarks@gmail.com> on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:57AM (#12960777) Journal
    It's more like me going into a shop and standing by a counter and offering better prices to the customers in that shop. I'm sure I'd get chucked out by security pretty quickly.
    • But that's not illegal. You may get thrown out (as businesses have a right to remove people from their store as they see fit), but offering better prices isn't wrong - I think it helps commerce.

      As much as I hate malware/popups, I agree with the court on this. If you were a business owner and you knew your prices were lower than the prices elsewhere, you've got a right to advertise it. The software is just clever enough to pop up ads at the right time.

      • But that's not illegal. You may get thrown out (as businesses have a right to remove people from their store as they see fit), but offering better prices isn't wrong - I think it helps commerce.
        As much as I hate malware/popups, I agree with the court on this.

        I don't think you've thought this through too much, or you'd see the contradiction in your two adjacent sentences.

        A targeted popup for a competitor appearing "on" (over, next to, on the same screen--but targeting) the website of a commercial interes

        • That's not the case. Mr. Quixly has a right to throw Mr. Shmoe out of his store, just like Contacts has the right to take WhenU advertising off of their server. But Mr. Shmoe can stand just outside the store and hand out any material he wants [he can even get a group of people to walk in front of the entrance of the store, barring entry!], and Mr. Quixly can hardly do a think about it.

          That's the parallel. Quixley can't change what happens to his consumers just outside of his stores, because Shmoe has free
        • But this judgement, extended into the Main Street Druggist Wars, says that Mr. Quuxly HAS NO SUCH RIGHT. He has to grit his teeth as Foobar Drug swarms his store with leafleteers and buttonholers, harassing his customers and interfering with his business.

          Good. Free market and all that. Security through obscurity (hoping that your customers don't know about the lower prices) doesn't really work well anyway. If Mr. Quuxly can't get lower prices than Foobar Drug then he needs to either demonstrate that his s

    • Re:Not the same (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xtravar ( 725372 )
      Actually, it's like having a servant who replaces all the ads in your newspaper with generic brand ads.

      Remember, the actual viewing is taking place on YOUR computer. Assuming someone would install this adware on purpose or knowingly, this might be considered 'good' for the consumer.

      The actual web site has no say in HOW you interpret their page. If it happens to be your client software interprets their page with different ads, so be it.

      Yes, we all hate adware, but the ruling makes sense even if the cour

  • that is, IF the adware was user-installed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:57AM (#12960780) Homepage Journal
    Do the users know they're getting this adware junk on their machines? If the adware was installed without the user's informed consent, then this is the problem. What the adware is actually doing on the computer is less of a problem. Who knows, maybe some users WANT competitive comparisons to pop up. Think of what a Froogle Toolbar widget would be like.

  • Install? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iriel ( 810009 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:58AM (#12960788) Homepage
    I notice that the case didn't address the legality of adware being installed without a user's full knowledge. I find it humorous, but I have an idea!

    They can inform the user that adware is being installed with a pop-up! Everybody reads pop-ups!

  • I'm amazed.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:58AM (#12960800)
    In fact, I'm astounded, frankly.

    I'm now about to visit the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and stick a big poster over their front door reading "For cut-price justice which is just as good, why don't you use the 3rd. U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instead? Our charges are only half as high, but our court officials are just as supercilious and our judgements just as incomprehensible. Why don't you book your appeal with us to-day? American Express and bullion accepted.

    And then I'm off to see how long I last parading up and down outside WalMart with a sandwich board advertising our local deli.

    • Hey. News. It's legal. You can go to WalMart, and so long as you *aren't on their land*, you're allowed to advertise for whatever you want. Outside the parking lot, put up a big sign for your local deli. Or the KKK. Or the ACLU. Or whatever you'd like.

      Since Adware doesn't directly affect the content of the website, there's very little difference. If you wanted to purchase the land around every WalMart for specifically advertising to the group of WalMart visiting consumers, you could do that. That's what Ad
    • So you'd rather them to have ruled that configuring your web browser to block ads or setting up a proxy to do the same was illegal?

    • Wrong Analogy (Score:2, Insightful)

      by drayath ( 158040 )
      As i see it this has nothing to do with the site that has popup's being shown on it.
      Just as is i could choose to switch of the site background color in MY browser, or open a second browser window showing a competitors site, or setup a sript to popup a window saying "Armidillo" whenever i open a webpage. Then this is purly my choice as it is my computer.

      Now if i have willingly installed some software that does the same thing, or opens some popup advert, again MY computer, i can do what i want.
      This is in eff

  • Thats fine... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BooRolla ( 824295 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:59AM (#12960804)
    I'm not concerned with what they show being illegal or legal. I'm concerned with how they get on my computer being legal or illegal.

    I should not have to dig through an install list to see if there is *anything* hidden in there. Especially anything that dials home and tells on me. If I'm downloading X, all I want is X. Period.

    Screw thinking that trademark infringement is shitty- Installing a program secretely and going to great lengths to make it a bitch to remove, now that is shitty!


    • I should not have to dig through an install list to see if there is *anything* hidden in there

      I'm not paranoid about cookies, but why do I have about 15 of them that originate from Slashdot? When did Slashdot start requiring cookie placement from *.slashdot.org?
    • Even if a file is in use you can still REN it to something else. Not sure if this works on 98 but on 2000 and XP it works. Generally I rename offending files to moo.txt or some variation thereof. They'll still be in use though so you can't delete them...yet.

      Reboot, and whatever was trying to launch the program/dll/whatever will no longer be able to find the file. Now, that they're not in use you can delete all the moo.txt files.

      The hard part is of course finding these files. But, once you know where

  • "Authorized" Adware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:59AM (#12960808)
    The court didn't have a lot of choice. WhenU was saying that the user authorized the software and it's the user's computer to do what they want. We all know intuitively that's bullshit, but the court needs evidence. If 1-800-Contacts didn't provide (enough) evidence of users having WhenU on their system without knowledge or consent then the ruling pretty much had to be for WhenU.
    • The court didn't have a lot of choice. WhenU was saying that the user authorized the software and it's the user's computer to do what they want.

      I haven't been following this case, but from the limited information in TFA, the case was brought by the owner of a web site that had competitor's ads popped up over it. If so, then the question of whether the user authorised the software to do what it did is irrelevant - there does not appear to be any breach of the rights of the party bringing the suit.

      If it

  • Complete Crap (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkBlackFox ( 643814 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:01AM (#12960830)
    'In 1-800 Contacts's lawsuit against adware provider WhenU.com, the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.'

    That's bull. Ads for a competitor produced by a 3rd party on any site is more like walking into a Burger King and seeing McDonalds ads plastered all over. In the physical world, managers have the power to deny any 3rd party advertising on their premesis, and can remove any posters/flyers/whatever not explicitly approved from their property. Why is cyberspace any different? WhenU is a 3rd party, hired by a competitor to produce advertising when users enter a target site. Said site has no defense, or no method of blocking/taking down the ads, as the pop-ups are generated client side. How does that make any sort of logical sense- that anyone can advertise whatever they want as a pop-up on any given site?

    Generally, when I visit a particular company's website, I'm interested in that company's products, not alternatives or knock-offs. If I were looking for "similar" products, I'd hit a search engine and search for "generic product X" rather than "brand name product X."

    • Re:Complete Crap (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BooRolla ( 824295 )
      There is a difference there: Burger King owns (rents, etc) their property. Guess who owns my computer?

      Its not like WhenU can put stuff on 1-800 Contacts domain. If there was some reason I installed this junk on purpose, whatever the hell that could be, who is 1-800 Contact to tell me differently. I dunno, maybe I wanted competition or what have you. Just remember, WhenU is not putting anything on 1-800's site, they are spying on you and offering "relevant" ads in return.

      Your brick and mortar analogy

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Complete Crap (Score:3, Informative)

        by slavemowgli ( 585321 )
        Except for the fact that this is not what was ruled on. The court did not go into how this particular piece of adware was installed, whether the user knew about it, consented to it or anything; rather, it merely said that *assuming* that the user did, the competitor did not have a case, as, basically, the user is allowed to do what they want on their computer, *including* installing a program that displays competitors' ads when you shop for something online.

        Staying in the analogy, the robot plastering thos

    • Re:Complete Crap (Score:2, Informative)

      by ampathee ( 682788 )
      The thing is, the court "views WhenU's ads as authorized" - so they're assuming that the user chose to install the program.

      They are not dealing with the possibility that the adware was installed without the user's knowledge and/or consent here - that is another issue.

      When you think of it that way - maybe I want to install a program that automatically gives me info on the competing products of those that I search for. Why should that be illegal? Why should a website that I'm viewing have any say on what ot

  • Sour Analogy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by atheos ( 192468 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:03AM (#12960846) Homepage
    the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.


    What a sour analogy. I see it more like a retial store placing their generic items IN SOMEONE ELSES STORE. I work for a business that sells products online, and we have had customers complain to us becuase our website has hyperlinks to our competing websites (placed there by malware).
    I don't think they understood the mechanism at work here! It's more likened to WalMart placing their generic products on K-marts shelves!

    • Re:Sour Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hkmwbz ( 531650 )

      "I see it more like a retial store placing their generic items IN SOMEONE ELSES STORE."

      Are you saying that your computer belongs to someone else? Or that the webmaster of the site you are visiting has the right to dictate to you how you view his site? That it should be illegal to use an ad blocker to change "SOMEONE ELSES SITE" and remove the ads? That you shouldn't be able to make the fonts bigger if you have bad eye sight?

      "I don't think they understood the mechanism at work here! It's more liken

  • What it means is that when someone's malicious software directs you to a competitor's site, that's no worse than having that software on board in the first place.

    This could actually be good, because it may help when companies try and use similar law to deflect criticism and commentary.

  • Pop-ups and spyware suck, but do you really want a precedent that says that programs running on your computer should be altered by what ADVERTISEMENT you happen to be watching?

  • In related news, the Mafia (Score:5, Funny)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:10AM (#12960918) Homepage
    In related news, the district court ruled that it is legal for the Mafia to use competing brands in their extortion efforts. A store owner complained that the local mafia was using Glock guns to threaten him when his store was selling Magnums. The store owner complained that it was not fair that his assailants were advertising competing products.

    The judge stated that "It does not violate trademark law to use competing products during an extortion effort." He added that this ruling does not make extortion legal, it merely states that the brand names of the products is not relevant.

  • Just because the operation of the adware program is legal in a technical legal sense, that doesn't make the process by which it got there legal, and certainly not right in a moral sense.

    It is my fond hope that all the adware companies, spammers, search engine optimizers, and other such trolls of online business burn slowly and long over fires built of their own avarice at stakes driven into the putrid muck in a special part of hell.


  • Lawyer will pounce on any grey area. A broad characterization of popup ad could include the "About" information in most legitimate software, or even the graphics commonly displayed at load time. If you want to split hairs in a courtroom, a lawyer could make the case that such information is an ad, and file harassing laysuits against software companies over the inclusion of such information.
  • the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.

    No, I would liken it to a retailer employee taking a generic competitor's product off the shelf and pushing it into my face while I'm looking at the name brand thing. If you want to be like the generic product sitting next to the brand-name, then make the add on the page, next to it, not pop-up, forcing you to close the window to continue with your shopping.
    • Actually, I think it's more along the lines of you going to Target, and when you walk up to a product display, calling a friend and saying "I'm looking at toothpaste, and then having that friend say "hey, you can get that cheaper at WalMart." Remember, the software in question in on the user's computer, presumably at the user's request. If the software _isn't_ there at the user's request, it's the user who has the cause of action against the software provider, not the seller of a competing product, since
  • It's nothing like a store selling name brand product's it doesn't make and selling a generic brand it does or doesn't make along side it. It's like going to a Eddie Bauer Outlet and selling Faded Glory jeans in front of the door. With the exception of retail outlets, A brick&mortar store makes it's money on selling products regardless of brand. Regardless of actual product, but of course most stores try to specialize (not since the days of the General Store that cowboy boots and eggs are sold in the
  • Here's how to get a ruling against adware: Sue them for infringing on Amazon's patent.

    I'm sure Amazon has a patent for popup ads. The idea is so simple and obvious, Amazon must have a patent.
  • the appeals court likened WhenU's ads to retail stores that place generic competitors next to brand-name products.

    I understand the point. But MANY ad-ware applications throw up ads that purposefully hide close buttons or cover up the entire screen making it difficult to shut down the ad. This is tantamount to a store's competitor blocking a customer's entry simply by throwing their body in front the door! Would that be okay, too?
  • So now that we've got this ruling, does this mean that we can bring back third voice [wired.com]?
  • This is bad...
    Very bad!

    In fact, overall this has been a very bad couple of weeks for the U.S. Courts.

  • That's like saying "once the gunman had sneaked into your house and hid in the basement for a week, it was legal for them to point their gun at you and demand you shop at Wal-Mart". How can the court allow them to hijack your computer to do anything, including popup ads, that is a secret feature you never agreed to run, that you'd remove if you could? That you usually can't even detect which program is doing it, that evades both standard and crafty uninstallers?

    No, the court is applying the current America

    • "How can the court allow them to hijack your computer to do anything"

      They didn't. They ruled that your decide what gets displayed in your own web browser.

      "No, the court is applying the current American jurisprudence ideology: corporations can do what their directors want, and humans can't do anything about it."

      Um, actually, this ruling states that humans can decide what their computer displays, and corporations can't dictate what your browser displays, and sue people for, say, blocking ads. Or

      • It does look like we're dealing with two different questions. The court dealt with the question of whether a third party (not the user or the primary website being browsed) can use a trademark, like the name of the primary website, to show the user content which competes with that trademark's content. Or whether the primary trademark excludes association, and therefore dilution, by the competitor. The court found that trademark doesn't stop a third party from associating the competitor with the trademarked
    • Like many people, you miss the point. The court did not rule that - in your analogy - it was legal for the gunman to demand you shop at Wal-Mart; rather, they said that if you *choose* to invite someone to your house who will then demand you shop at Wal-Mart, then Wal-Mart's *competitors* don't have a case, because it's your house and who you do or do not invite and what demands they make is none of their business.

      Of course, it would've been nice to have a decision that installing spy-/adware without the u
      • Within its scope, this decision is good: software is not prohibited by trademarks from using those trademarks to find other products that compete. But its scope is too narrow, because the question of authorization determines whether the trademark is being used for legal "comparison shopping" or for illegal brand dilution. Another poster says [slashdot.org] that the case assumes that the consumer and the adware maker's interests are identical. When that is not the case, when the consumer has not authorized he adware, the a
  • In order to present ads related to the current website, the program needs to spy on the user's surfing. Is this spying legal?
  • ...I own my computer, and my monitor. So what pops over, under, or to the side of anybody's website is not the concern of the website owner. Not even a little bit. They do not own that space in any way, shape, or form. Nobody is using their servers to send this crap to me. So it does not involve them.

    For all we know, there is some jackass, somewhere, who actually knowingly installs spyware and malware, because he likes what it does. He wants ads for other sites popping up over what he's looking at.

  • This is A GOOD THING! And flawed analogies... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hkmwbz ( 531650 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:34AM (#12961124) Journal
    People, let's keep both feet on the ground here! This ruling means that we (users) are allowed to make changes to pages we are viewing through our browser. In other words, it confirms that Firefox's Greasemonkey/Opera's User JS is perfectly legal. It confirms that the webmaster has no right to tell you how to display things in your own browser (removing ads, anyone?).

    Now, spyware which installs itself on your computer and changes pages for you/displays ads is bad. But it would be terrible if we got a ruling saying that people aren't allowed to decide how pages display in their own browser.

    If someone installs a piece of software and they are well aware of the fact that it will replace ads on web pages, then fine! It's up to the user.

    What we need to deal with is software which tricks the user into installing ot, or which installs itself through the use of security flaws and similar things.

    Also, replacing ads on sites is nothing like McDonald's replacing Burger King's posters with their own in a Burger King restaurant. Burger King is Burger King's property, remember? Like the browser on your PC is under your control? I would be more like McDonald's giving you glasses that detect Burger King posters and replace them with McDonald's posters in the display in front of your own eyes. In a way, at least :) You chose to put those glasses on, and Burger King has no say in what you choose to look at.

  • One mistake many people make is confusing the legal precedent with the litigant. In this case, the case may benefit a fairly nasty adware company, but the case law upholds the concept that the owner of a website does not hold any special claim on your computer.

    There are a lot of spurious comparisons being made here to brick and mortar stores -- basically, "This is as if Burger King went in and put ads up all over a McDonald's." But that comparison is only true if the website owner has some kind of claim t

  • Bad Result... Good Law (Score:4, Informative)

    by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @10:35AM (#12961139)
    This ruling supports the principle that people can do what they want with their own desktop, even if it covers up someone's advertising.

    Today it's an evil adware company. But tomorrow, it could be the AdBlock [mozdev.org] project.

    Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees.

    The trademark issue is significant. But my freedom to do what I want with my computer is more important.
  • It's more like a competitor sneaking into your store and replacing all the signs with directions to thier own store! It would be nice if judges were required to have a shred of a clue about the topic when ruling on something.
  • AFAIK, telemarketers cannot call your cell phone due to the fact that you pay usage charges in the form of air time, and that call costs you money. If this is, in fact, correct, why can Adware and Spam artists get away with doing the same thing when the typical company pays usage charges (in the form of bandwidth) for their connectivity?

    As far as I'm concerned, my company loses money every time an ad pops up. How is this lawful?
  • I'd bet they're getting some real mixed messages. After all, they got sued in France for returning a search with competitors' ads. Granted, they probably wouldn't have been sued if the companies being "hurt" weren't French, but that's another story.

    So if you voluntarily use a service (such as Google) it's illegal for that service to return ads for competitors. But if you involuntarily use a service (such as WhenU.com's) it's perfectly legal for that service to return ads for competitors.

    The first world wi

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