Brian Krebs "blogged yesterday":http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/05/tech_groups_back_kasp... about a broad coalition of technology groups supporting Kaspersky, an internet security company, during its legal fight with Zango. Krebs writes that in May 2007 Zango sued Kaspersky "charging that the company interfered with its business" by removing Zango's software, which has been classified as adware by multiple groups.

Kaspersky does not deny that its program removes Zango-based software from computers. In August of 2007 the initial case was dismissed by a judge because the court believed that the Communications Decency Act (CDA) allows companies to remove software in order to protect users from material which may be considered objectionable.

Zango had previously faced off against the FTC in 2006. The "settlement":http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/11/zango.shtm that resulted from that investigation required the company to pay $3 million. Caroline McCarthy wrote at "CNet":http://www.news.com/Zango-reaches-settlement-with-FTC/2100-1032_3-613236... that the agreement also stipulated that "the company must adhere to FTC regulations that bar it from loading programs onto customers' computers and monitoring them without their consent." FTC spokesperson Lydia Barnes was quoted as saying: "It violates federal law to secretly install software that forces consumers to get pop-ups that disrupt their computer use."

The current case has drawn significant interest within both the security and business fields. A previous amicus brief was filed in favor of Zango by the National Business Coalition on E-Commerce and Privacy, an organization representing powerful corporate interests according to "Krebs":http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/05/tech_groups_back_kasp.... Behavioral advertising and many other profitable marketing strategies depend on installing tracking cookies or web beacons on user computers, so they are actions businesses would like to protect. Thomas M. Boyd, attorney for the organization, represents company concerns that "a security software company has unreviewable power to decide that any content is objectionable and to deny user access to that content without any accountability for any damages that action may cause."

The "amicus brief":http://cdt.org/privacy/spyware/20080505amicus.pdf filed this week represents the other side of the issue in a broad coalition including the "Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)":http://www.eff.org/, the "Business Software Alliance (BSA)":http://www.bsa.org/, and the "Anti-Spyware Coalition":http://www.antispywarecoalition.org/. Ari Schwartz of the Anti-Spyware Coalition stated: "This is an extremely important case for consumers as to how security software protects them going forward, and whether the onus is put on the security company or [the adware vendor]." It is relevant to all the companies that classify Zango software as "adware" such as Microsoft (which removed 7.1 million instances of Zango software from customer computers) and Symantec (which has a description of Zango's adware attributes "here":http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-080410-...).

This case remains one to watch, as business and technology duke it out over consumers and rights.

Note: This blog post was updated on May 8, 2008 to make corrections regarding Zango's 2006 involvement with the FTC.