usatoday.com — A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware.
Oct 12, 2005 View in Crawl 4
drahknonOct 12, 2005
Now that's pretty interesting. Courts have already extended the doctrine to spamming internet message boards. I wonder if that also means you can get consent (the usual TtC defense) or constructive consent if the user does a click-through EULA they don't read carefully?
xpticalOct 13, 2005
How can it be trespassing if you invite it in? Install Shockwave and ended up with the Yahoo! Toolbar? Well, it's your own damn fault.Most, if not all, programs that bundle spyware have licensing agreements that tell you what they are going to do. If you don't take care to read all 35 pages of the agreement, then you deserve what you get.I really hate spyware. But how can some third-party come in and tell me what agreements I can and can't make between a company willing to foot the bill for my freeware and a customer that gets to use my utilities for free?What's next? Suing Google for displaying ads in my browser when I visit Slashdot?
Closed AccountOct 13, 2005
Spyware used to bother me when I used windows, but now I own a real computer I'm not so timid about visiting, for investigative purposes, the sites that used to embed themselves into Win XP's Internet Explorer as the default home page every 5 minutes.It's amazing how basically blatant some of these sites are about the fact that, what they really want you do to, is sell you an uninstaller for the software they placed on your machine without your consent in the first place. The legal system has utterly failed to come up with anything which is a deterrent to these bozo's so far, so I'm not holding my breath for the effectiveness of an ancient trespass law, but it will be interesting to see if it opens the way for people to claim emotional distress for having been exposed to some of the pornography that these sites display as their mast head.
raanoOct 13, 2005
I'm glad to see the courts starting to get a clue. I couldn't break into my neighbor's house to put spoiled food in his refrigerator, so why should people be allowed to enter my computer without permission and put junk in there!BTW. Check those EULAs carefully. Use EULAnalyzer if you don't like reading legal documents (<a class="user" href="http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html).">http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/eulalyzer.html).</a>
crackhappyOct 13, 2005
The use of "allege" and "supposedly" throughout the article I find hilarious. The reporter seems scared to death of libel.It's also ironic that when I opened the article, it tried to insert a pop-under....
mrmatchgameOct 13, 2005
I have 50 pending Lawsuits on Kazaa for f**king up my computer while I tried to download MP3's!!! J/K
sfacetsOct 13, 2005
This account has been closed by the user
u3b3rg33kOct 13, 2005
it's about time.