ClickZ: WeatherBug Creates Desktop Software User's 'Bill of Rights'

WeatherBug published a users' "Bill of Rights" that amounts to an adware best practices policy, much like the nascent privacy policies that some sites started publishing in 1998 after privacy advocates began to gin up concern about information collected on site visitors. The policy sets out what the company says are disclosure rights for consumers as well as proper behavior for ad-supported software. Most controversially, it defines itself - an application that displays local weather - as mere "software" and paints competing products that additionally collect user surfing data to better target ads as "spyware." That would mean that WeatherBug would not be able to adopt behavioral targeting offered from companies like Tacoda without crossing the line it drew between black hat and white hat status.