Earlier this week, we reported that Zango had backed off its case against PC Tools.
Now, Zango’s court case against Kaspersky was thrown out because Kaspersky enjoys immunity as a result of the Communications Decency Act.
You can see the decision here, at Ben Edelman’s site (who, as a consequence, has also updated his list of legal actions by adware/spyware companies).
Ben points to the relevant statutory language as being:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of … any action taken to enable or make available … the technical means to restrict access to the material described [i.e. material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, … or otherwise objectionable].”
You can read this language yourself here. (Under Sec. 230).
This is very big news folks. Big news. This decision may have far-reaching consequences for security companies in the inclusion of malicious and/or potentially unwanted software in their software.
Alex Eckelberry