Fergie's Tech Blog

Washington State Outlaws Spyware

Shamelessly snipped from /.

Posted by timothy on Tuesday May 17, @06:11PM
from the good-luck-with-all-that dept.
An anonymous reader submits "Today, the Governor of Washington signs a a bill outlawing spyware (bill history) which imposes penalties of $100,000 per violation. Spyware is broadly defined. It includes everything from changing a browser's bookmarks or homepage settings, "Opening multiple, sequential, stand-alone advertisements in the owner or operator's internet browser", keystroke-logging, taking over control of the computer, modify its security settings, and even "Falsely representing that computer software has been disabled." But here is my favorite: "Prevent, through intentionally deceptive means, an owner or operator's reasonable efforts to block the installation or execution of, or to disable, computer software by causing the software that the owner or operator has properly removed or disabled automatically to reinstall or reactivate on the computer." Microsoft and Ebay both testified in support of the bill. On May 10th, a similar law banning Internet and email phishing was also passed."

posted by Fergie @ 5/17/2005 04:26:00 PM