kaila
join:2000-10-11
Lincolnshire, IL | With products like they offer.... There is no way Isearch can back themselves legally on this one. My guess is they have no intention of following through and are really doing this as a cheap way to see if anti-spyware groups will be intimidated enough by an attorney letter to get off their backs- the odds are against it, but worth a try.
Spyware makers in general really can't push very hard legally. If they did, the resulting PR would bloody them severely and likely result in regulations that would put them completely on the other side of the law. |
| I completely agree. I think that they are hoping that the threatened websites cave in and stop telling everyone about ISearch's malware/spyware nature. The most I could see them doing is filing suit and then trying to settle out of court with the provision that the site stop calling their application spyware/malware (ala PCPitStop). This would be quite risky for them though as there is no hard and fast definition of spyware. The site could easily say that, according to their spyware definition, ISearch falls well within the Spyware category. (And, given what ISearch does, it wouldn't be too hard to make a definition that includes ISearch.)
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-Jason Levine
http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/
http://www.PCQandA.com/
http://www.urateit.com/ |
| reply to kaila
I tend to agree. However, I think that, if they find some measure of success, they'll use it as leverage against anti-spyware software vendors to force them to de-list their software. If they can muddy the waters enough, they can start arguing semantics of what is and isn't spyware, then they'll argue that programs like Spybot shouldn't be targeting them. They may even go so far as to sue someone, claiming that they're distributing legitimate software that people want, and these anti-spyware vendors are "hackers" who are targeting their software out of some misguided belief that it's spyware and not the legitimate, wildly popular software that it is. |
