Garfinkel- Comment

Simson L. Garfinkel April 7, 2004To: FTC Spyware WorkshopFrom: Simson L. GarfinkelSubject: Public Comments on SpywareTo the FTC Spyware Workshop:Spyware is one of the most pressing problems facing computer users today.Unlike computer worms and viruses, spyware is authored by paidprogrammers at legitimate companies. This means that there is considerableresources at the disposal of spyware creators, there are systems in place todistribute spyware, and there is a profit motive to make spyware asnefarious, as covert, and as lucrative as possible.On Wednesday, April 7, 2004, I published an article on Technology Review’swebsite, technologyreview.com. The article, entitled “The Pure Software Actof 2006,” proposes a mandatory labeling regime as a solution to the spywareproblem.The State of Utah recently passed an Act regarding spyware, and two billshave been proposed in the US Senate. These legislative approaches allattempt to ban spyware outright. My concern with this approach is twofold.First, the activities of spyware are similar to the activities of manylegitimate programs. These acts are crafted so that they will only applyto spyware, but in so doing they create exemptions for non-spywareprograms. It is my fear that these exemptions could be utilized byspyware programs as well.Second, I believe that we can use spyware as an opportunity to passlegislations or regulations that would benefit consumers of many kindsof programs. If we carefully craft our ...