Advertising good, privacy bad...understand honey?
Don’t Call It Spyware
By Annalee Newitz
Wired
12/2005
What it comes down to is this – the largest creator of spyware was making a whole lot of money while, at the same time, angering a whole lot of people. Court cases and lawsuits arrived on their doorstep, so they changed a few tactics and the company name. Yeah! Now the business and legal world is happy and the company (now known as Claria) will sue YOU if they catch you calling their stuff spyware (it’s adware, thankyouverymuch).
The power of money and advertising in this country is astounding. Do you ever take a look at the annual financial concerns for this country (and the world) and find yourself thinking that the true role of U.S. Citizen, on the global scene, is to buy more stuff than anyone else? Never mind the huge extensions of credit or the massively long hours at 1 to 3 jobs, we must spend money to keep everyone else a float!
What better way to keep US Citizens at their nationally designated task then to force advertising in their face, make it illegal to complain about (or, possibly, remove) the unasked for ‘feature,’ and then push ‘click here and buy!’ windows in their face so that they’ll either be pulled away by the allure of pretty things or will accidentally click their way into a new state of ownership.
By Annalee Newitz
Wired
12/2005
What it comes down to is this – the largest creator of spyware was making a whole lot of money while, at the same time, angering a whole lot of people. Court cases and lawsuits arrived on their doorstep, so they changed a few tactics and the company name. Yeah! Now the business and legal world is happy and the company (now known as Claria) will sue YOU if they catch you calling their stuff spyware (it’s adware, thankyouverymuch).
The power of money and advertising in this country is astounding. Do you ever take a look at the annual financial concerns for this country (and the world) and find yourself thinking that the true role of U.S. Citizen, on the global scene, is to buy more stuff than anyone else? Never mind the huge extensions of credit or the massively long hours at 1 to 3 jobs, we must spend money to keep everyone else a float!
What better way to keep US Citizens at their nationally designated task then to force advertising in their face, make it illegal to complain about (or, possibly, remove) the unasked for ‘feature,’ and then push ‘click here and buy!’ windows in their face so that they’ll either be pulled away by the allure of pretty things or will accidentally click their way into a new state of ownership.
posted by A at 8:18 AM
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