RealNetworks fixes 'highly critical' flaw

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Who?s responsible?

In the example of the tire on the car, the tire manufacturer isn?t responsible if the tire is shot out at any speed. The 3rd party who shot the tire out is the one who is responsible. The Malware authors, financiers (you know those internet advertising companies out there), software companies that bundle these products (to earn money for their code) and the companies that promote the software are the ones who are responsible. Ok, what about my personal responsibility?

To be honest, I think most of the readers of ZDNet publications are running clean machines. We take our personal responsibility to get knowledgeable about the machines we operate seriously. That?s why we are a community of readers sharing ideas with each other. We use different operating systems and software to do this educational activity of ours. I safely use Internet Explorer and Windows XP; others use Firefox and Linux to achieve their safety. The real fact is we are aware of our surroundings and don?t install blatantly dangerous software. We actively make that decision ourselves. Why because it is our responsibility and we know it. What about the responsibility of the advertisers and distribution point of the products?

Download.com, for example is responsible for the truth in advertising they provide for people looking for specific software to do the task they would like to perform. I think most of us have obtained a software package from download.com because we can trust them to provide us with an honest critique of the software we are about to try.

I have to laugh when I see the weekly download digest. Every week there is in the top 10 list products listed to remove the Spyware on suffering computer systems. In this top 10 list there are applications that install via 3rd party bundles the very Spyware people are complaining about. Take this week for example, in the top ten lists are two truly free applications listed; they are Ad-Aware and Spybot ? Search and Destroy. If you look at the description page you can see clearly that the license is ?Free?. After you install the software you find out that the license is truly ?Free? and download.com has honestly reported that to us, the end user.

What about some of the other software in the top ten lists? If you look at the list you will find there is another ?FREE? program called Morpheus. The product description page once again tells us the license is ?Free?. If you fully read the description there is a disclaimer by download.com stating that there is 3rd party (Spyware) associated with the install of the Morpheus software product. I am thankful that download.com has informed me of the situation. This is an honest practice. But let?s get real; is the license truly ?Free? as the description says it is?

No! It is paid for by dangerous 3rd party software generating advertising revenue for Streamcast Networks the company being paid to distribute this crummy software through a highly appealing product to children and ignorant end users. In my humble opinion I think download.com should discontinue the practice of calling this type of software license ?Free?, when it?s not. There should be a license category called ?Adware Supported? with a disclaimer that explains the consequence of this type of license. This disclaimer should be placed directly between the download link and the actual download of the product. Then ask the question ?Do you still want to download this file?? to get the users permission. This practice would at least be an honest effort by the CNET networks to educate the download.com end users. If this were done would the products mentioned even be in the top ten lists? Would there be 132,657,423 (downloads to date) infected computers?

As to a law to govern the malicious abuse of software insecurities, I support shutting down the networks and ISP?s that let the criminal hackers exist on the network (even if we have to take China and Brazil off the internet). And finally throw the criminal hackers in jail, you know the guys who shoot the tires out on your PC.

Posted by: Uncle Buck   Posted on: 04/23/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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