February 28th, 2005
iDownload hires a lawyer
While adware makers such as WhenU and 180Search try to play nice and reenter decent society, spyware vendor IDownload.com, which also operates under the name ISearch.com, tried to silence its critics. The company hired an, in my opinion, unscrupulous lawyer to send out cease and desist letters to Web sites such as Castle Cops and Spyware Warrior, telling them not to call the ISearch toolbar spyware. This lawyer, Mark D. Hopkins, doesn’t appear very competent, as Spyware Warrior points out that she did not actually refer to ISearch as spyware on her site. This attempt to silence critics of spyware is so ill-founded as to be laughable. It’s pretty easy to send out a cease and desist letter; all you have to do is type. Actually learning something about the law is a lot harder.
