Kaspersky Wins Important Ruling for the Anti-Malware Industry

ABC writes "Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the Company to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs. In the important ruling for the anti-malware industry, Judge Coughenour of the Western District of Washington threw out Zango's lawsuit on the grounds that Kaspersky was immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act."

CDA Trumps Constitution?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the Communications Decency Act, part of which states: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected, or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to [such] material.""

I don't like this at all. It seems to me to indicate that my ISP can block me from p0rn, for my own good, and I have no recourse. And it doesn't matter if it is constitutionally protected material? WTF?

Surprised and gratified

[golodh]

Well ... I'm surprised and gratified that in this case the law actually protects users instead of companies out to turn a buck. That isn't always the case I feel.

And yes, I think the immunity is for the right reasons: there are lots of advertisements and pieces of commercial attention-grabbing software that I don't want on my system. I don't care a hoot if that's fair or not w.r.t. whatever company thought they'd bring out such software. I just want to be able to prevent it from installing.

So any anti-virus software, anti-spyware software like Adaware is something *I* run, and what they remove or disable they do so on *my* authority.

I'm just relieved to see that not every random company out there can sue them for providing me the service I ask for on my own computer.

Good result. Questionable Logic.

[Compulawyer]

I have not read the full opinion yet, but I am at a loss to see how this fits under the CDA's definition of an "interactive computer service." I thought that Kaspersky, like most virus detection programs, ran as a process on the user's machine and only connected to a server for definitions updates. if so, I can't see how that classifies as an "interactive computer service" under the act. Then again, maybe I'm just not being creative enough in my statutory interpretation.

Remember when...

[DigitalSorceress]

I remember "back in the day" when spyware was still something you needed a separate scanner (Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, etc..) for.

My pet theory was that since a lot of the spyware was coming from legit (but questionable) companies, the major antivirus players were afraid of touching it due to the threat of these kinds of lawsuits. Even though spyware and malware has since grown to such a pervasive problem that the big AV firms have gotten on board, I bet they were all watching the outcome of this suit. I for one am really happy that the ruling went in Kaspersky's favor, and shudder to think what would have happened if it hadn't.

Hopefully this ruling will send notice that you can't hide behind "restraint of trade" to keep antivirus / antispam programs from calling a spade a spade.

hmmm

[g0dsp33d]

I'm as much of a fanboy of the stick it to malware developers movement, but this is kind of sets off a few flags.

Kaspersky was immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act, part of which states: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected, or any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to [such] material."

It will be interesting to see two things: 1) how this cause stands up when something like Nortan AV "accidentally" gets blocked; 2)IANAL, but shouldn't this cover DRM? It falls under otherwise objectionable at the very least (filthy too, IMHO).

Re:Remember when...

[Khaed]

As someone who ran away from Windows, screaming in terror, I have to say: Probably not.

I went to Linux exclusively over a year and a half ago, but I'm not about to recommend it to most non-techies I know. Even when I've cleaned all the crap off of their computers that they accumulate in the form of spyware and viruses. I have no experience with Mac or any BSD variant, so I can't recommend that, either.

Warts and all, Windows is what most people know, and most aren't interested enough to learn anything new -- even if it's not complicated (which Linux can be). And by "warts" I mean "Zango and friends."

Besides... I like the non-techie admiration of my "genius" when I run AdAware and Spybot for them and get rid of spyware. It must be the feeling jocks get when they win a game.