Zango, a company that used to be called 180 solutions, has a long history of making and distributing spyware. (See the Wikipedia article for their sordid history.) Not surprisingly, anti-spyware vendors routinely list Zango’s software as what’s tactfully called "potentially unwanted". Zango has tried to sue their way out of the doghouse by filing suit against anti-spyware vendors. In a widely reported decision last week, Seattle judge John Coghenour crisply rejected Zango’s case, finding that federal law gives Kaspersky complete immunity against Zango’s complaint.

After disposing of some jurisdictional quibbles (Kaspersky writes their software in Russia and only sells it here), he addresses the key question of whether 47 USC 230(c)(2) provides immunity to Kaspersky. This is a section of the CDA originally intended to protect purveyors of anti-porn web filters, but deliberately written broadly to cover any sort of filterware. E-mail, tech policy and more