So you've decided that you can't turn a profit from making crappy products that noone cares about so you've decided to make money by suing people.

Why don't you ask SCO how that worked out for them?

Zango, nee 180solutions, a well-known adware firm which has been accused by the US Federal Government of promoting their business in an unlawful fashion, is shown by Sunbelt, whose CEO has a record (see Google Groups, news.admin.net-abuse.email) of being in favor of (or at the very least, unopposed to) spamming, to have filed a frivolous lawsuit in an attempt to exercise SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Particiaption) - an act which is itself unlawful in many US States.

The US civil Justice system is deperately in need of reform - the only practical way to stop frivolous lawsuits is to institute an *automatic* "loser pays" system (which must also mean "plaintiff pays if the suit is dropped and not settled"), so that anyone filing suit for the sole purpose of annoying people or causing them expense will be in more danger than his intended victims.

But that won't happen. The current system is too lucrative for the lawyers who make the rules.

I am somewhat disappointed that the article completely fails to mention just what Zango have been smoking, because it's got to be some seriously good shit, man.

I fail to see how any person sane in mind and body would willfully install a program that not only transforms the fastest of Intel's offerings into a lumbering sloth, but also forces you to watch adverts while you work...

Maybe if the user agreement, when printed, did not amount to 20 A4 pages of size 10 font legalese, and clearly stated what was going to be installed - and giving the user a clear option of cancelling (Yes, Incredimail, I'm talking about you too), and a brief description of what the software would do (no, "Bringing you great offers" is not clear enough) then this sort of software (what I now tend to call "hostageware") would not be flagged as bad by malware scanners...

Cheers,

Daniel

I've thought many times about how great a loser pays scenario would be. But when you think about it if I were to sue a large company because they've wronged me in some way they are going to spend lots of money defending themselves and possibly win even if I'm right then I have to pay the gigantic bill they amassed that in its size caused me to lose in the first place. That means people with limitless cash would spend even more defending themselves knowing the plaintiff would have to pay. OR in the RIAA suits I'd have to pay for their prosecution er.. grievance testimony against me because I had the audacity to think I was right. It just wouldn't be fair. Also please don't jump to the "people are making to much money" arguement it gets so old.

People use it with cancer too.. do you really think that if there were a cure for cancer people would hold it back because there's to much money in not curing it?! rich people die of cancer too! sorry just had to rant there for a second