Will Antispyware tools actually remove anything in future?

It seems if the makers of various types of crudware simply insert what their programs do (even if buried deep at the heart of a sixty-seven page EULA inbetween a half-inch thick scrollbar) then the program in question can no longer be called ad/spy/malware.

This is not a new practice - however, with so many legal letters flying about these days it's hard not to end up with a few papercuts.

The Cloudeight / thunderball saga between a site that uses Outlook Express to send Email stationary as their main source of income and Hotbar, whose installation on a PC disables that option (leading to a legal spat between both sides that has rumbled on since July 2004) will seemingly go on forever - or at least as long as this thread, which details the whole sorry saga in a blow by blow account. In fact, that thread begins with Eric L. Howes detaling WhenU's dropping from many Adware removal tools' definition tables, takes a curveball onto the Cloudeight freeway and hovers for a while in a state of limbo while everyone waits for Hotbar to actually do something one way or the other.

Added to this is the recent spat between iSearch and Spywarewarrior - and so far, it looks like Spywarewarrior wins by virtue of an opponent pulling a no-show. There's still time for iSearch to turn up at the stadium, though it's doubtful anyone will be there by the time their bus rolls into the parking lot.

It'd be a real shame if someone let their tyres down and mugged them or something.

It's clear that this is the new battle ground of the Antispyware war - not on end-user's PCs, but on pieces of badly xeroxed paper and in the pockets of shady Lionel Hutz type legal-type guys. The plot thickened when Spywarewarrior (hey, two in a row, must be getting real popular!) recieved yet another legal missive - this time from Direct Revenue (aka abetterinternet) regarding the Rogue Antispyware software list. I won't go into details, as you can read all about it here. Suffice to say, Eric L. Howes recieves said legal email, looks at it for a while, probably goes for a walk and maybe buys some stuff, then goes home to fire this off. It's a great response, and no doubt the legal type guy will have to spend about a fortnight getting their head round it - though the fact remains, the tool in question (here, Mypctuneup) has been removed from the listing.

So a no-score draw, or at least submission by way of a technicality. The sad thing is, the more you read these legal missives fired off by companies now looking to fly straight (or at least, not quite as bendy as they once did), you almost find yourself feeling a little sorry for them - until cold, hard reality bats you in the face and you realise the awful truth. There's a lot more at work here than people simply trying to correct public notions of what their products do (or don't) do.

It smacks of more critic silencing, more SLAPP, more attempted prevention of simply trying to tell the facts and let the public make their own mind up. Once this sinks in, you realise your battles to remove the latest infection from a PC are going to be made a whole lot more difficult. So with that in mind, here's an upgrade I'd like to see in the next version of Hijack This: