Court Favors Security Company in a Spyware Case

Kaspersky Lab, famous for developing secure content management solutions, declared that the Untied States District Court of Washington passed judgment in support of Kaspersky Lab, giving liberty from liability in the case filed by Zango, an online media company, against it. Kaspersky said that Zango had filed the suit to compel the security company to label Zango's software as "non-threatening" and to stop Kaspersky's software from stopping Zango's programs.

As always, the mission of Kaspersky Lab is to keep the Internet safe for all its users, said Steve Orenberg, president of Kaspersky Lab, USA. Information Week reported Orenberg's statement on September 5, 2007. The company was very happy with the case's outcome because it supported the information security industry's core message i.e., consumer protection is its first priority, Orenberg said.

The judge dismissed Zango's lawsuit and declared Kaspersky as 'immune from liability' under the purview of the Communications Decency Act. According to the Act, a user or provider of computer service for interaction between parties would not be held responsible for any action that the user or provider voluntarily takes to prevent access to any material considered as lewd, lascivious, obscene, filthy, harassing, violent or objectionable in any other form.

The week has not been a good one for Zango who had to withdraw another case of similar nature. It had to drop a case against anti-spyware vendor PC Tools of Australia when Zango realized it would not win the case at all. However, Zango managed it rather cleverly on an official blog saying that PC Tools had reclassified their software and was not blocking or removing Zango software any longer as it had been doing earlier.

The outcome of the case is a crucial victory for an ordinary user who is tired of spyware and adware. It acts as a protection for the consumer who is now free to choose any software for his/her system. Also, the anti-spyware vendors would now enjoy the right to select and block programs they think would undermine the consumers' choice. In any case, consumers can still adjust their anti-spyware scanners to permit Zango products.

Related article: Court Acquits Student From Generating Fake Boarding Passes

» SPAMfighter News - 9/12/2007