ZDNet: Few solutions pop up at FTC adware workshop

A Federal Trade Commission hearing on spyware allowed various players to air their concerns, but they seemed to agree on very little. Software companies voiced concern that ill-tailored laws would create liability for them and reduce Internet innovation (to which, in an unintended moment of humor, a Microsoft representative suggested that future Windows XP enhancements might change all that). Privacy advocates painted dire pictures of surreptitious behavior monitoring, painting companies like Google and even advertisers employing cookies as bad actors.

When a Justice Department prosecutor was asked whether new laws would be helpful, he answered, "By and large, the answer is no. In our quiver, we have a number of arrows we can use in prosecutions."

Anti-spyware advocacy group PC Pitstop said that an anecdotal survey indicated that only one out of four people with adware programs such as WhenU or Claria's Gator remembered having installed it, implying that the distribution deals and disclosure terms were in the least not clear enough to constitute permission. This sort of argument was used to try to lump those companies, and even sites that place cookies without disclosure, into the "spyware" camp.

Google's advocate said that he was initially not quite so opposed to legislation until he saw the language being drawn up. "The more that I look at the text of the bills that are floating around, the more nervous I become." Some of the suggested bill language put limits on information collection so strict that websites would have about the same reader monitoring capabilities as print publishers.

Some Internet publishers fear that the anti-spyware agenda may be used by stick-in-the-mud media companies as a way to stave off competition from the web and its data-intensive and easily-personalized qualities.