House Panel OKs Copyright, Spyware Bills
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Hackers who secretly install "spyware" on others' computers and Internet users who copy movies and music without permission could face up to three years in prison under bills that advanced in Congress on Wednesday.
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The House on Thursday passed the second bill in three days that would outlaw &quot;spyware,&quot; irritating software that quietly monitors the activities of Internet users.
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The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday that further penalizes the use of spyware, but leaves out requirements for compliance by software developers.
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed separate legislation designed to combat spyware and the illegal online swapping of copyright material.
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A bill that privacy experts have called one of the worst before the current Congress has passed a House committee vote. The Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act cleared the House Judiciary Committee by a 20-16 vote.
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The U.S. House of Representatives on  Tuesday voted to crack down on deceptive "spyware" that hides  in users' computers and secretly monitors their activities.
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The House of Representatives passed   a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional   authorization for President George W. Bush's warrantless   domestic spying program but subject it to new rules.
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The House of Representatives passed  a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional  authorization for President George W. Bush's warrantless  domestic spying program but subject it to new rules.
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Organizations and law enforcement agencies fighting spyware are making progress, but new tools in an antispyware bill stalled in the U.S. Congress could improve the efforts, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday.One of the spyware bills passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, the Spy Act, would give the FTC authority to impose civil fines on companies that distribute spyware to consumers&#39; computers. The bill, along with the Internet Spyware Prevention (or I-SPY) Act, have&#160;stalled in the Senate&#160;since passing the House in May and June.The FTC has the authority to collect profits from spyware operations and collect money for consumer redress, but it lacks the authority to impose other fines, as it does when going after spammers, said Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, speaking at a spyware forum in Washington, D.C.Assigning a dollar figure to consumer harm is tricky in many spyware cases, especially when the spyware delivers pop-up advertisements to computers, Leibowitz said. It&#39;s sometimes difficult to get courts to assign large consumer damages to pop-up cases, he said.In some cases, spyware damages are assessed by judges &quot;who don&#39;t even use computers,&quot; said Dave Koehler, with the FTC&#39;s Bureau of Consumer Protection.The Spy Act would allow the FTC to fine spyware vendors up to $3 million for hijacking computers, delivering unwanted adware, and other violations, and $1 million for collecting personal data without permission, in addition to going after the vendor&#39;s profits and seeking consumer redress.Additional authority to impose civil fines would give the FTC &quot;an enormous deterrent,&quot; Leibowitz said.&quot;Right now, companies know that the worst they can do is lose their profits,&quot; he added. &quot;They&#39;re not going to get fined on top of that.&quot;The FTC has brought several spyware actions against companies. In February, the agency settled&#160;a case against adware distributor DirectRevenue. In that case, DirectRevenue settled for $1.5 million, based on its profits, but the founders of the company had received more than $20 million in venture-capital funding, Leibowitz said.While participants in the spyware forum said there continue to be many challenges, including a growing trend of foreign spyware vendors, the cost of spyware to U.S. consumers seems to be falling. Consumer Reports estimated that spyware cost U.S. consumers $2.6 billion in 2006, but only $1.7 billion in 2007, noted Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a supporter of StopBadware.org, a consumer-protection effort aimed at spyware and other malicious code.The drop in the cost of spyware can be attributed to a number of factors, Schwartz said. Antispyware technology is getting better, the FTC has taken action against spyware vendors, and StopBadware.org has distributed a&#160;list of malicious Web sites, he said. In addition, some states have taken action against spyware, and cybersecurity groups&#39; public education programs seem to be working, he said.But Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), noted that consumers may know more about spyware, but they aren&#39;t always acting on their knowledge. A survey released by the NCSA and McAfee earlier this month found 78 percent of respondents&#39; computers didn&#39;t have all three of what the NCSA calls the &quot;core protection&quot; software: anti-virus, antispyware, and firewall.&quot;We&#39;re not seeing a huge increase in the actual behavior change,&quot; he said.
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The U.S. House of Representatives on  Thursday unanimously passed a second bill targeting  perpetrators of computer "spyware" that hides in users'  computers and monitors their activities.
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House panel on Tuesday is expected to approve bill aimed at regulating how American companies operate in China and other foreign locales notorious for censorship.
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Anti-spyware legislation sails through the House of Representatives, with the bill's sponsor pressing to have both houses approve a law to reign in invasive computer programs by the end of the year. By Michael Grebb.
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A bill backed by President George W.   Bush to enable a court review of his domestic spying program   won the approval on Wednesday of a U.S. Senate panel under   election-year pressure to safeguard civil liberties.
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Leading security software vendor PC Tools is pleased to see House  passage of the Internet Spyware (I-Spy) Prevention Act of 2007,  providing the justice system with greater power and resources to  prosecute cyber criminals. "We need to give these criminals more than a  slap on the wrist.
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Measures to curb the use of "spyware" -- the computer programs that surreptitiously track people's online movements -- are steamrolling their way through Congress and a combined proposal could reach the President's desk before lawmakers break for the November election.
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Companies and others that secretly install "spyware" programs on people's computers to quietly monitor their Internet activities would face hefty federal fines under a bill the House passed Tuesday.    The most egregious behaviors ascribed to the category of such software - secretly recording a person's computer keystrokes or mouse clicks - are already illegal under U.S...
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On a unanimous vote the US House of Representatives Thursday approved a bill making many &quot;spyware&quot; activities illegal. Spyware can be surreptitiously loaded into a computer via the Internet and extract information