New bill in House of Reps. gives spyware creators jailtime

[Tyler]

A story at http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/14536">Boycott RIAA talks about a bill that has been passed by the House of Representatives that gives up to 5 years jailtime for creators of spyware.  I guess now they just need to find a way to police it.  This to me seems virtually impossible.  First, most computer users can't even find the spyware or don't even know they have it, so finding the creator of the spyware would be pretty tough.  Second, there will be problems of spyware creators residing in foreign countries and extradition laws to deal with.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[Michael Kennedy]

from what i saw of that bill, they seem to have some pretty bad definitions of what spyware actually is.  following what they drafted i could name a ton of antivirus, firewall, and other system utilities that fir that description as well.  they'd be better off to let CAOS gut their bill and rewrite it so they actually have real definitions of what they're calling spyware.

[Tyler]

That would be great.  Outlaw antivirus programs.  

It's always great that the people with the least computer knowledge are the ones that make laws regarding computers.  Same thing with the DMCA.  I doubt many people that worked on that had ever listened to an MP3 or knew anything about it.