Monday, July 19, 2004
Deconstructing the spyware face-off | Perspectives | CNET News.com:
"July 19, 2004, 4:00 AM PT - By Declan McCullagh
Thanks to skillful lobbying and bipartisan political schmoozing, America's high-technology industry can point to a handsome number of legislative victories, like the R&D tax credit, more H-1B visas, restrictions on Internet access taxes, free trade with China, and curbs on lawsuits arising from the Year 2000 computer bug.
Now this enviable winning streak may be ending. Even the combined might of Microsoft and some of Silicon Valley's largest corporations wasn't enough to derail a spyware bill that's hurtling through the U.S. House of Representatives at an unusual speed and is now awaiting a floor vote...
"We didn't get very far at the end of the day," admits Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. The ITAA wrote its own letter warning that the "current bill will generate a veritable blizzard of legally mandated pop-up notices that only a lawyer would love," and would unreasonably target any utility that might "update, renew and monitor programs residing on the computer user's system."
...The Spy Act is no prize, either. The latest version has ballooned to 21 pages and hands broad new powers to the Federal Trade Commission to police the U.S. software industry. Legitimate firms would have to comply with an avalanche of regulations of dubious value--yielding notices that Americans will ignore as completely as they do the junk mail the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law requires banks and credit unions to send out..."
"July 19, 2004, 4:00 AM PT - By Declan McCullagh
Thanks to skillful lobbying and bipartisan political schmoozing, America's high-technology industry can point to a handsome number of legislative victories, like the R&D tax credit, more H-1B visas, restrictions on Internet access taxes, free trade with China, and curbs on lawsuits arising from the Year 2000 computer bug.
Now this enviable winning streak may be ending. Even the combined might of Microsoft and some of Silicon Valley's largest corporations wasn't enough to derail a spyware bill that's hurtling through the U.S. House of Representatives at an unusual speed and is now awaiting a floor vote...
"We didn't get very far at the end of the day," admits Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. The ITAA wrote its own letter warning that the "current bill will generate a veritable blizzard of legally mandated pop-up notices that only a lawyer would love," and would unreasonably target any utility that might "update, renew and monitor programs residing on the computer user's system."
...The Spy Act is no prize, either. The latest version has ballooned to 21 pages and hands broad new powers to the Federal Trade Commission to police the U.S. software industry. Legitimate firms would have to comply with an avalanche of regulations of dubious value--yielding notices that Americans will ignore as completely as they do the junk mail the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law requires banks and credit unions to send out..."
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