Sen. Fritz Hollings is pushing a bill that supposedly safeguards online privacy -- but actually gives intrusive marketers a green light.
Outrage surged through users of the KaZaA file-sharing utility when they learned, early in April, that a new breed of spyware had been installed on their computers. KaZaA, probably the most popular heir to Napster's throne, was already well known for coming bundled with a wide variety of parasite programs that serve up advertisements, track Web-surfing activity, and otherwise cause mischief. But the newest arrival topped anything seen before in scope or ambition.
A company called Brilliant Digital had surreptitiously installed software in computers running KaZaA. Once activated, the software would set up a distributed computing network, allowing Brilliant to hijack the resources of thousands of personal computers to serve the needs of its own customers. Brilliant's plan is to use the computer processing power generated by the network to serve technologically advanced advertisements and track how users react to those ads. complete article
-------------------- Mike O'Neill
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. - Arthur C. Clarke
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