said by gg5 :

"Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy & Technology two years ago... stated the biggest obstacle to crafting effective anti-spyware laws was getting everyone to agree on what spyware is."

Actually, no. The main obstacle is that lobbyists, for both scumware makers and mainstream software companies alike, will prevent any effective legislation being passed, because it migh restrain them from making money.

The secondary obstacle is the dumb idea that to be effective against spyware/adware, a law must rely on defining spyware/adware. This misguided idea can only lead to legal quibbles over what category a program belongs in, and a law as useless as the fake anti-spam law.

What's needed is something much simpler. Let's have a law that makes three requirements for *all* software:

1. No installation without the computer owner's informed consent.

2. Full disclosure of exactly what the software does, in plain English, without the user having to read tiny print, interpret legalese, or link from one page to another.

3. An easy way to remove the software at any time, completely, including reversal of any changes it made to the system.

If these rules were applied to all software, there would be no lack of legal protection against the spyware/adware problem - without any need to define spyware or adware.