Anti-Spyware Law Snags Anti-Spyware Vendor

Country Lawyer writes "Washington state's anti-spyware law has just resulted in a $1 million victory for the state, the first successful prosecution under the new law. The weird thing? They sued an anti-spyware vendor." From the article: "Washington State went after the company after 1,145 state residents purchased the software and the complaints began rolling in. Secure Computer president Paul Burke will now pay $200,000 in penalties, make $75,000 worth of restitution to Washington residents, and pay another $725,000 to cover the state's attorneys' fees. The irony of an anti-spyware law being used against an anti-spyware vendor was not commented upon."

BS

[cwells (58526)]

"$725,000 to cover the state's attorneys' fees"

that's just insane!

When you bill 25 hours a day, 8 days a week ....

[wsanders (114993)]

... 459 days per year the hours add up pretty quickly.

Actually, not insane

[Presence1 (524732)]

Assume a billable rate of $150 per hour, which is more than the average general practice firm charges, but far less than the $300+ that big city specialist firms charge for their most experienced people. At the $150 rate, it takes only 4834 billable hours to to get to $725K, and that is excluding expenses (expert witnesses, courier services, etc.).

With 2000 work hours per year, that is less than three attnys full time for a year. With a case that complicated, and testing a new law (so they REALLY want to get it right to set the good prescedent), this doesn't seem unreasonable.

Of course, I'm sure he doesn't get a discount, or get to nit-pick the bill either.

Re:BS

[Loco Moped (996883)]

Absolutely. Lawyers have no right to be paid for their work.

When's the last time we paid sharks for eating swimmers?
Same principle applies.

Re:BS

[LordEd (840443)]

Actually, the difference is the lawyers bill you for the suit, the soap and water to clean it, and the time.

Re:BS

[soft_guy (534437)]

The difference between a lawyer and a Mobster is that lawyers are afraid of getting blood on their suits.

I always thought the difference was that mobsters have a code of ethics.

Re:

[Ironsides (739422)]

In that case, it's the law that needs to be changed. Currently, it appears that it only severes to get your money back+ some small ammount. If they want damages, I guess there is small claims court. Laws haven't exactly caught up to the computer age, or the domino effect that a crazy computer program can cause on a system (computer or otherwise).

How do you justify a rate cap?

[Presence1 (524732)]

There may be abuses, overcharges, and skewed payouts, but saying the nobody of some profession should ever earn more than $X per hour is absurd.

What you say is equivalent to some PHB saying that no programmer or system designer should ever earn more than $50 per hour.

In fact, some should earn much less, and some much more. Hourly rates are really just a shorthand in the capitalist system for how quickly you generate value.

I've got considerable experience in software and corp management, and so often had to deal with lawyers, mostly on IP and contract issues. As I worked with them, I was intrigued to find out how much the work resembled software development. In both arenas, one needs to evaluate the scope of the project, anticipate the opportunities, obstacles, and pitfalls, then design a structure that will handle all these cases. Once a overall plan and structure is selected, then the detailed modules or sections are crafted using custom code or language where necessary, and reusing pre-tested code or language where possible. SW Developers use the languages chosen for the project, and Lawyers use the English language and Terms of Art. Both professions have barely competent people at the bottom and utterly brialliant people at the top. Both have utter scumbags who should be shot on sight (spammers, spyware, or scammers), and others whose wisdom is a national treasure. Both professions have trivial problems handled mostly by cut-and-paste, and incredibly complex problems.

When given an interesting problem in their domain, the lower ones will take almost forever to come up with a bad answer, and the top ones will give a great answer almost off the top of their heads. This is what makes the good ones worth FAR more than the average, and the average ones worth more than amaterus on the street.

It couldn't have happened to nicer people???

[zappepcs (820751)]

FTFA: "The dubious marketing tactics did not end there. Secure Computer also sold its product using pop-up ads which warned users that their computers might be infected with spyware, and it offered them a free system scan. The results of the scan were invariably positive. "Our investigation found that this so-called free scan always detected spyware, even on a clean computer," said Senior Counsel Paula Selis, who led the state investigation. "In order to remove this falsely detected spyware, users were instructed to pay $49.95 for the full version of Spyware Cleaner." It is illegal under Washington law to "induce a computer user to download software by falsely claiming the software is necessary for security purposes," she added."

I was kind of tired of seeing stuff like they used....

Misleading...

[Jaysyn (203771)]

These guys used bullshit popups in web browsers to convince people they needed to buy an Anti-Spyware product. Go get'em Washington.

change to 'a corrupt company anti-spyware vendor'

[ghostlibrary (450718)]

I think the 'lack of irony' is that the supposed anti-spyware company was itself corrupt. "The company allegedly spammed", did fake scans then informed customers they needed to buy the product ("Our investigation found that this so-called free scan always detected spyware, even on a clean computer,"), broke their own consent agreement, used shaddy sales tactics, etc.

So, oddly enough, it seems the law worked. Just calling yourself an 'anti-spyware vendor' is no protection from being a spyware company.

But did it really work?

[raehl (609729)]

We know that they paid a total of $1 million in penalties.

But how much in profits did they make?

If they made $2 million in profits, then the law didn't work at all.

No. It was spyware

[darkonc (47285)]

It passed itself off as anti-spyware, but actually caused problems for users that installed it, was sold by spamming, etc., etc., etc.

I can fix that for you...

[MyNymWasTaken (879908)]

This is not a story of an innocent company harmed by a stupid & malevolent government. The company is the equivalent of a glass window replacer who advertises their services by throwing a brick with their flyer wrapped around it through prospective client's windows.

RTFA! No Irony Ahead

[by Anonymous Coward]

They spammed and pop-up advertised with no opt-out.

They made false claims as to a limited time offer.

They provided free scans that resulted in a false-positives.

They offered upgrades to a "pro" version of a product that was essentially the same as already purchased.

Say what you want about over-regulation, but these guys seemed a perfect target for these type laws. Has nothing to do with their supposed status as anti-spyware vendor.

Left out of article summary

[griffjon (14945)]

The irony of going after a spyware vendor ends once you discover that they're spamming lying scum:

"...their "Spyware Cleaner" product had, well, a couple of flaws: it didn't work well, it deleted a user's Hosts file after installation, and it tried to convince users to "upgrade" to another program that did essentially the same thing.

But it was the way that Spyware Cleaner was marketed that attracted the Attorney General's attention in the first place. The company allegedly spammed users to advertise its product, included deceptive subject lines, failed to include an opt-out mechanism, and suggested that the product was "discounted" for a "limited time," when in reality it was always available for the same price.

The dubious marketing tactics did not end there. Secure Computer also sold its product using pop-up ads which warned users that their computers might be infected with spyware, and it offered them a free system scan. The results of the scan were invariably positive. "Our investigation found that this so-called free scan always detected spyware, even on a clean computer," said Senior Counsel Paula Selis, who led the state investigation. "In order to remove this falsely detected spyware, users were instructed to pay $49.95 for the full version of Spyware Cleaner." It is illegal under Washington law to "induce a computer user to download software by falsely claiming the software is necessary for security purposes," she added.

No the irony is...

[korbin_dallas (783372)]

that a handful of LAWYERS get $750,000 meanwhile the real engine of the economy, people who bought and used the thing have to split $75,000.

"If I owned this place and Hell, I'd rent this place out and live in Hell."

Re:

[Guppy06 (410832)]

"people who bought and used the thing have to split $75,000."

Over about 1000 people, that averages out to $75 for what they paid $50 for.

they deserved it

[OglinTatas (710589)]

It would be ironic if they were more than nominally an anti-spyware company. I read the article, and it sounds like the ruling was correct.

My sympathy for them is near zero...

[mark-t (151149)]

Anti-spyware that cannot be easily uninstalled and constantly harrases the user to purchase an upgrade is no better at all than the malware that it proposes to eliminate. The tactics of such software are to harrass the user to the point that they ultimately surrender and buy the software simply to be rid of it. I've recently been witness to this happening on a Windows system that had both a firewall and current virus protection at the time, yet not even the latest antivirus signatures loaded into it would get rid of the malware. After spending three days trying to eliminate it using every tactic I could think of, I reformatted the drive and reinstalled Windows. For the sake of reference, it looked like it was promoting the software "Virus Bursters" and "Drive Cleaner". Any product I could find that claimed to get rid of them either simply failed to do the job or else cost money to get rid of it (although the scan was free). The latter policy frankly struck me as no different than the tactics that the author(s) of this particular malware are trying to employ, and I will not submit to such blackmailing tactics.

It isn't that much

[everphilski (877346)]

7 lawyers making $100/hour working about 6 months (40 hours workweeks, no overtime) would account for it.

Not to mention their legal staff. Evidence aquisition. Etc. Should they have sought a larger penalty? Sure. But don't underpay the lawyers just because the penalty is low.

Re:

[sqlrob (173498)]

Yeah, they're really red faced after this court loss

Re:

[Aqua_boy17 (962670)]

I know, where's BadAnalogyGuy when you need him?

This is like a bullet proof vest maker shooting someone in the chest. No, wait, this is like a vest maker being shot in the chest, with his own gun, and then being thrown in a river. No wait...

Re:

[DragonWriter (970822)]

What is the deal with State Attorney's fees? This action was brought by officials of the State Attorney General's office, their salaries are paid by taxpayers.

The taxpayers have (directly or through their representatives) chosen to have certain wrongdoers pay them (the taxpayers) back for those salaries and other expenses in certain cases when the expenses are devoted to dealing with those wrongdoers' wrongdoing; essentially, this money will go to the state's general fund, to offset expenses (both personnel

One little thing you missed.....

[Anachragnome (1008495)]

It was NOT a ruling, it was a settlement. HUGE difference. The most important is that no "precedence" has been set. What that basically means is that this case cannot be used in the future to help in the prosecution of other offenders.

Is it a beginning? Yes. Does it move us closer to being able to prosecute others? No.

While I applaude the state of Washington on bringing charges in the first place, I think that they did the people of the state a disservice by settling. It seemed they had a pretty solid case yet caved at the last moment.

I suspect that what happened is that someone decided that in order to collect ANY funds from the company, they had to settle. Otherwise, the defendants attorneys would have "used" up all the funds in an effort to defend the company leaving none for the "fines".

Attorneys have been known to obfuscate, delay and appeal cases all in the name of extending their own value, and thus, their fees.