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WhenU Is Legal

29 Jun 2005

TechDirt has a report on the lawsuit against WhenU, a case I’ve been following very closely and that is very related to the lawsuits against Gator, now Claria, and other GAIN network members.

Excerpt from previous post :

[...] It has always been important to collect data from your customers, in order to be able to guarantee them a personal approach. The right way to gather information is to let people send it in voluntarily, but apparently that doesn’t always result in the expected response. So companies started to find new ways to gather information, some of them less legit than others. To define the border between ‘letting people agree to share their data’ and ‘having the data without actual consent’ is a rather difficult matter, [...] [Read it]

As I’ve reported earlier, the court ruled against WhenU with this verdict:

“[...]the judge granted the preliminary injunction based only on trademark infringement, considering the likelihood that WhenU’s pop-ups could mislead or confuse 1-800-Contacts visitors as to the origin of the ads.”

Apparently, this verdict has been overthrown now :

From TechDirt :

“Adware maker WhenU has been involved in most of the lawsuits over this issue — as some companies were upset that WhenU popped up competing ads when people visited their sites.

In the various lawsuits, the ability to pop up competitor ads was found legal the first and the second time. However, the third time the case came up, a judge said they were illegal. However, it looks like an Appeals Court has now overturned that ruling and said that it’s perfectly legal to do those popups, given that people want them.

This is the right decision. We have no problem with lawsuits against these companies for doing sneaky installs, or other efforts to get that practice to stop. But, at the end of the day, if you want to change your browsing experience on your computer, that should be your right — even if it involves additional ads.”

Good news for Claria and BehaviorLink, seems to me.

Read [Mike's contribution on TechDirt] “Appeals Court Overturns Bad Decision About Adware”

Interesting discussion going on in the comments overthere:

Quote Mike “You do see the difference, don’t you? If they’re being tricked, that’s a problem. However, the lawsuit ISN’T about people being tricket, but whether or not it’s illegal to have these popups at all. It’s not. It’s perfectly legal, and the court agrees.

You can hate the Adware companies all you want (and I do), but you’re doing more harm than good fighting them on the issues that they’re right on, rather than focusing on the many, many areas where they’re definitely doing wrongs.”

Read it on C|Net News, [Court gives Adware maker WhenU green light, by Stefanie Olsen]
Also related : Things you should tune in to right now
and Behavorial Advertising part 1 and part 2

 
2 Comments

Posted by Miel Van Opstal in Corporate News, Ethics, Spam & Scam

 

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