The LA Times reports on brand name advertisers found advertising on adware, including Mercedes-Benz and Travelocity.com. As is typical in these situations, the brand names disavow any connection with the adware advertsing as soon as the press contacts them. This…
Jakob Nielsen ran a column describing user expectations about “search”—it should have a box, a search button, and a separate search results page where results are linear and prioritized. He says that user mental associations have become so strong that…
In the wake of Spitzer’s action against Intermix, I’ve been seeing lots of speculation that Spitzer’s office will go after other companies as well, given Spitzer’s reputation for pursuing an entire industry. See CBS Marketwatch (registration required); Riva Richmond of…
Ben Edelman leveled two charges at AskJeeves on Monday. First, Ben asserts that AskJeeves targets kids for toolbar downloads. Second, Ben asserts that an AskJeeves distributor exploits security holes to install the toolbar without consent. This follows on the heels…
Congress is discussing a national mandatory security breach notification law. In a minor surprise, at least one legislator, Rep. Oxley, is asking the right questions. He observes: “consumers may begin to ignore those notices as just that many more pieces…
Interview here. I have a lot of issues with Ben’s positions, and I will have more to say about that later. In this interview, though, notice how Ben conflates adware and spyware. Even Declan found that confusing.
By John Ottaviani In the latest attack on open source software and the General Public License , Daniel Wallace, acting as his own attorney, has sued the Free Software Foundation in the United States District Court for the Southern District…
I’m pleased to introduce John Ottaviani as a guest blogger. John is a partner at Edwards & Angell in Providence, RI. John practices technology and IP law and is co-chair (along with me) of the Intellectual Property subcommittee of the…
Declan weighs in against HR 29. He says, “politicians write laws that treat technology as something that’s as easy to define as a food product or an agricultural implement. It isn’t.” Too bad Congress isn’t listening to the many rational…
Lee Gomes points out that self-service ad programs like AdSense fund the creation of junky low-value websites that constitute a new form of search engine spam. He hits the nail perfectly when he says: “a kind of schizophrenia exists at…