Utah House committee sends on anti-spyware bill

A bill designed to block spyware that generates pop-up advertising on computers was passed out of a House committee on Monday.

HB104, passed out by the House Public Utilities and Technology Standing Committee, tweaks the Spyware Control Act, which was approved last year as the first state spyware legislation in the country.

Among the 2004 measure's provisions were attempts to limit pop-up advertising. But the sponsor, Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, said Monday that Utah was "maybe a touch early" with its legislation. Some businesses at that time were being affected by outside pop-ups, but now the "bigs of the world" are being affected by spyware that generates pop-ups, he said.

Pop-up generating spyware "is software that's on your computer and you don't want it there," Urquhart said.

As defined in the bill, pop-up ads are those separate from an Internet Web site that show up on a computer screen because a user accessed a Web site. Urquhart said visiting a travel-based Web site might cause a rental-car or airline ad to pop up. The ads typically come from competitors of the company with the Web site.

Urquhart likened it to lemonade stands, in which everyone wants competition by having more stands, but pop-ups, he said, "are stealing lemons off of someone else's tree."

"Users hate it because it slows down a computer," Urquhart said, adding that half of the complaints Dell gets are related to spyware rather than the computers themselves.

The situation also hurts commerce, he said. "I think that this (bill) will help e-commerce and help our constituents with their computing experience," Urquhart said.

As defined in the bill, spyware does not include software that the user has installed to prevent access to certain Internet content. It also allows the attorney general or the owner of a registered trademark, service mark or domain name in an Internet Web site address by a Utah business that is affected by a violation of the bill to recover $500 for each occurrence of a pop-up ad prohibited in the bill.

The 2004 legislation is the subject of a lawsuit filed by New York-based Internet advertiser WhenU.com, which is challenging its constitutionality. That suit is pending in 3rd District Court. WhenU.com has contended that the law violates the U.S. and state constitutions, along with federal commerce and copyright laws.

---

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com