On Tue, 6 Jan 2004, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> The spyware (at least last time I checked) isn't installed without
> permission. If a person installs
> Kazaa they knowingly have agreed to do so. Ignorance is not an excuse.
When we first moved to Panama, one of the servers on our network had
gotten our IP block blacklisted for email on a *load* of lists (something
that was quickly remedied by our provider by shutting down the site, as
our provider is quite anti-spam as well) ... turns out that what ppl were
downloading a client from them (voluntarily), and one of the steps in the
installation procedure is a long license agreement ... turns out that one
of the things you agree to in it is that the software can harvest email
addresses off of your computer and make use of it for spamming purposes
...
... the trick: you had to actually read the license agreement to find
this out ... and most ppl are lazy (I'm as guilty as the next) and don't
read them, so altho they *agreed* with the license, they had no idea that
the software was going to do this ...
I've never installed Kazaa, so maybe they are more open about the Spyware
it installs, but if its something that is "agreed to" inside of their
license agreement, chances are, 99.9% of computer users will never see
"the fine print" ... and even if they do read it, chances are they will
gloss over it ...
The point: Ignorance may not be an excuse, but we all tend to "trust" that
the software we try to use, that is in use by millions of others, will be
trustworthy software and not try to pull a swift one ... and, in this
case, a swift one is burying a loophole into the license agreement about
what the software can/will do :(
----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664