The House seems to think that stopping the states from fighting Spyware is worth their time. I wonder if the Senate will….

The federal preemption provisions (Section 6), meanwhile, trump most of the stricter state laws that might have been used to go after badware vendors. This is particularly disappointing, as state laws have opened a new front in the war on badware. A few categories of state laws are preserved, including trespass, contract, tort, and fraud laws. And, in an interesting twist, H.R. 964 preserves state consumer protection statutes, but only if the state’s Attorney General is bringing the enforcement action.

Reading between the lines in Section 6, one thing becomes clear: this section is intended primarily to block the ability of private citizens to sue badware vendors under state laws. By consolidating all the enforcement authority against badware in the hands of the FTC and state Attorneys Generals, software and adware vendors are trying to quietly block consumer class actions that could target their misbehavior. For example, H.R. 964 would have made it impossible for EFF to use California’s Business and Professions Code 17200 (which allows private citizens to sue for unfair and unlawful business practices) against Sony-BMG for its spyware-laden copy-protection software.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Politics, Technology, eff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.