Avira Wins Case Upholding Its Right To Block Adware 64
Mark Wilson writes: Security firm Avira has won a court case that can not only be chalked up as a win for consumer rights, but could also set something of a precedent. Germany company Freemium.com took Avira to court for warning users about "potentially unwanted applications" that could be bundled along with a number of popular games and applications. Freemium.com downloads included a number of unwanted extras in the form of browser toolbars, free trial applications, adware, and other crapware. Avira's antivirus software warned users installing such applications; Freemium took objection to this and filed a cease and desist letter, claiming anti-competitive practices. But the court ruled in Avira's favor, saying it could continue to flag up and block questionable software.
Freemium was ordered to pay all court costs. (Score:5, Informative)
Most excellent!
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Hopefully, they where not offered a chance to buy upgrades and extras (like gavels, judges or supercharged courtclerks), but they have the option to go the long way around to an appealscourt...
What is not excellent... (Score:2)
... is on one hand the AV companies are flagging PUA, while on the other hand offering toolbars and search changes of their own at every opportunity. Effectively they are doing what they can to force their own search on users and then flagging anything that might change it, a very shady position if you ask me.
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Who cares? Avira isn't the only one to benefit.
Precedent (Score:1)
The concept of "Precedence" in law is a US concept, not a German(y) one.
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At least in the US, that seems to be a factor when(for some reason of how the courts are structured and arranged) a given court decision is not official precedent for the pu
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Precedent cases can be used as a source of argumentation by the lawyer, but ultimately it is up to the judge to decide how to interpret the law. This is why similar cases can have completely different rulings, but usually haven''t, since the law framework, on which judges base their decisions, is generally the same.
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
While true, judges tend to follow the ruling on the table. If only to appear consistent and not wanting to contradict their peers.
Twice so in a matter where most judges don't have the slightest inkling of an idea what's going on. Like, say, "anything computer/internet".
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While true, judges tend to follow the ruling on the table. If only to appear consistent and not wanting to contradict their peers.
It's also a lot less work to find a case that is quite close and copy what the judge in the other case found. Instead of figuring all the details out himself, which is hard work, the judge just needs to check that all the details of the other court case match.
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So? Can German courts not set precedents for future German decisions?
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Only constitutional courts can do that (because their rulings can become laws). Generally, German judges are only subordinate to the law, this is why precedents aren't binding.
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this really went to court (Score:5, Insightful)
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I know.
Like WTF? We need a court to determine what the hell I can block?
Re:this really went to court (Score:4, Interesting)
No, we need a court to determine whether a company can block something for you.
Which seems odd considering that Net Nanny and the likes have been offering essentially the exact same service for years now and nobody bothered to complain.
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Again, same for either program. Both are installed by the user to filter out unwanted content, with the program's maker in the end deciding what's considered "unwanted" (the user only gets to set a category, i.e. "porn" in one and "ad junk" in the other).
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Net Nanny and the likes have been offering essentially the exact same service for years now and nobody bothered to complain.
Presumably Net Nanny never came to the attention of whatever fuckwit is in charge of freemium.com
This isn't about people's rights or the right to do legitimite business, it's about fuckwits who think it's perfectly OK to infest your PC with sluggish, personal-data-stealing crapware using whatever means they can legally get away with. Just so long as they can get a new car out of it, that's fine.
Me? I'm now thinking of registering my copy of Avira.
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That sums up fazebook 100%. :-/
Re: this really went to court (Score:1)
Re:this really went to court (Score:5, Interesting)
i tell you we are fucked for this to even need a court case of course we can flag and block things we don't what on your pc.
Relax... You can sue over many things; that doesn't imply you have a snow flakes chance in hell of winning...
They were probably just hoping avira would settle, and add an exception for freemium.
Re: this really went to court (Score:1)
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There is no such thing as a certain outcome in a court case, particularly if the other side has a lot of money to spend and can file motions continually. The SCO case took over 10 years. If you run out of money for attorney fees you lose by default.
True, nothing in life is sure...But the SCO case was in the US, I'm not sure it's relevant in the German court system.
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Everyone has an opinion on malware (Score:4, Insightful)
Browser Search Toolbars - it's a matter of provider. Personally I prefer to not have any toolbars because I don't trust those vendors. Other articles state that the current landscape of BHOs pegs about 80%+ of them as having malware-like behaviors, including:
- Deliberate opt-out mechanics with unclear opt-out instructions.
- Deliberately sabotaged uninstallers (so they can't be easily uninstalled).
- Installer tripwires (so they automatically reinstall if removal is attempted).
- Obfuscation to make them hard to detect.
- Or just plain drive-by installation.
If your software has to attempt to protect itself from my attempts to uninstall it then try making a case for why it might be wanted. The industry is living in denial if it can claim software we're all trying so hard to remove is "wanted". So...If I can assert that then why can't any random company say the same? Or is this a case of "it's only legal to say it if no-one is listening"? Companies like Freemium.com are the reason computers aren't any fun anymore - I spend more time fixing machines because of disingenuous jerkoffs like those.
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I'd certainl yhope so... (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems about as silly as arguing that throwing away junk mail without opening it is abridging the spammer's right to free speech.
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is there some sort of 'right to be installed' that software possesses that nobody told me about?
They were probably trying to get the court to invent one, similar to the EU's ridiculous "right to be forgotten".
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I don't think the blocking of shitware is a problem per se. It seems that the objection is to the labeling of the products of others as "shitware". There are apparently rules that forbid Coca cola from saying "You should drink coke instead of that diarrhea water called pepsi".
I understand the motivation for these sorts of laws, but they do lead to cases like this, where our ability to call a turd "a turd", is questioned.
I would much prefer a world where there was freedom of speech even in advertising, and
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I don't think the blocking of shitware is a problem per se. It seems that the objection is to the labeling of the products of others as "shitware". There are apparently rules that forbid Coca cola from saying "You should drink coke instead of that diarrhea water called pepsi".
"diarrhea water" is a specific term that can be tested and proven false. That makes it libel.
Stick to subjective things like 'taste' and you'll be fine. eg. You can say "Drink Coke because Pepsi tastes nasty!" with no problem.
Back to "shitware". That word isn't in the dictionary AFAIK so you ought to be fine calling your competitor's product "shitware".
"Potentially unwanted applications", the term used by Avira, is very conservative. I'm not surprised the judge tossed the case out and ordered freemium to pa
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Also you should be able to say "Pepsi *tastes* like diarrhea water", because that is no longer an objective claim. Taste is subjective.
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I suspect the legal theory goes like this:
By calling our fine, outstanding product "shitware," you have defamed us.
Or, possibly, "You encourage others to engage is practices that harm our business, which somehow constitutes some kind of fraud or conspiracy or something."
Mind you, I agree these people should be publicly whipped for being assholes, but it isn't at all difficult to come up with an internally consistent legal theory to support their claim.
Fortunately, the court saw fit to spank them for being
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...true. But this is much more like the "Pink Slime" controversy over there in the States. People were not aware of what was going on and reacted quite badly when the cat was finally let out of the bag.
Legal warfare against the relevant whistle blowers in the news media commenced.
The offending meat companies claimed damages.
Re:I'd certainl yhope so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Under what legal theory would it be forbidden to offer a product that blocks shitware? Even if we grant that this 'freemium.com' must be tolerated as legal-but-sleazy, rather than dragged out and hung from a lamp post; is there some sort of 'right to be installed' that software possesses that nobody told me about?
Oh, that's no problem. Freemium claimed (and likely has the numbers) that their income from sleazy installs against the wishes of the computer went down, and that it was due to Avira's software (which they probably also can prove). So Avira _did_ interfere with Freemium's business, there is no doubt about that. The question was whether they interfered in a legal way, or in an illegal way. And the judge said it was legal. I suppose if Avira put up an alert saying "Don't install this, this software will cause cancer" they would have lost.
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Was it all uniform though? As an IT guy, I can relate to black listing certain types of updates and preventing Microsoft from just force feeding updates to everyone.
It's the perpetual problem of Microsoft not really being responsible with the hardware vendor really being the one on the hook. They are likely to suffer for Microsoft's mistakes.
What were the odds? (Score:2)
Avira is a PUP itself. (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, all free AV programs are highly suspect in their behavior, by their nature and goal. They're full of upsells, they will passive-aggressively threaten you, they will try and install PUPs themselves... etc.
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>In my experience, all free AV programs are highly suspect in their behavior, by their nature and goal. They're full of upsells, they will passive-aggressively threaten >you, they will try and install PUPs themselves... etc.
Not all free AV programs are like this. MS Security Essentials do not produce any popups unless they are relevant to a detected software.
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I tried the free Avira... couldn't take it... hourly badgering for buying it...
You might need protection from this type of attack!
You might need protection from Dogs
You might need protection from this
on and on... it never ended till i just got rid of it.
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I couldn't take the badgering to upgrade from free... If it worked well and I liked it I may have, but it was just a frustrating, annoying experience to constantly have it tell me why I should give them money.
If I did, then the next step would be to buy the next level up, because you might be unprotected against something else...
I've moved onto another one that doesn't badger me, so I am close to giving them money instead.
Bwahahaha! (Score:1)
Freemium.com promotes Avira (Score:3)
"Avira flags all that crapware that most other antiviruses are paid to ignore," said a spokesman for Freemium.com.
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Stupid judges, stupid juries (although I don't know if this was a jury trial), "expert" witnesses wholly owned by the plaintiff, deeper pockets than the defendant, sleazy lawyers... All can lead to a completely ass-backwards decision that has so little to do with the facts in evidence that the case might as well have been decided by flipping a coin.
I don't know what it's like in Germany, but here in the USA trying to get a judge or a jury to understand what an antivirus program even IS is a crapshoot at bes