Spyware Act Loses Its Cookies
from the it's-a-step dept
Congress today took another step forward with their attempt at a piece of anti-spyware legislation by removing the language that included third party cookies as potentially liable under the law. This makes sense, as the cookie issue was likely to be a problem. However, it's not entirely clear if the rest of the law is any good. It tries to ban "phishing, keystroke logging, homepage hijacking and ads that can't be closed except by shutting down a computer." However, it seems like most of these should already be covered by anti-fraud laws, though you could make the argument that it's helpful to have the specifics outlined here. Still, the worry with this type of legislation is that if it's written too broadly, it ends up banning some perfectly legitimate applications.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
