| By Mr. Shannon, a petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 286) of Charles E. Shannon, Scott P. Brown, David P. Linsky, Susan C. Fargo and other members of the General Court for legislation relative to the regulation of unconsented internet advertising. Economic Development and Emerging Technologies |
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
SECTION 1.
Chapter 93 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2002 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting after section 114 the following section:-
Section 115. Spyware Control Act
As used in this section, the following words shall have the following meanings, unless the context requires otherwise:
“Context based triggering mechanism”, a software based trigger or program residing on a consumer’s computer that displays an advertisement according to the current Internet website accessed by the user or the contents of the current Internet website accessed by the user.
“Opt-in choice”, verifiable and explicitly confirmed permission by a person allowing “spyware” or a “context based triggering mechanism” to be installed on their computer.
“Spyware”, software residing on a computer that monitors the computer’s usage and either sends information about the computer’s usage to a remote computer or server or causes to be displayed an advertisement in response to the computer’s usage, or both. For the purposes of this section, the term “spyware” shall not include software designed and installed solely to diagnose or resolve technical difficulties or software that solely reports to an Internet website information previously stored by the Internet website on the user’s computer.
It shall be illegal to do the following without receiving explicit consent and without giving written directions on how to remove such software:
(a) install spyware on another person’s computer
(b) cause spyware to be installed on another person’s computer, or
(c) use a context based triggering mechanism to display an advertisement that partially or wholly covers or obscures paid advertising or other parts of an Internet website.
A consent agreement regarding any of the above shall provide a clearly identifiable “opt-in choice”.
It is not a defense to a violation of this section that a user may remove or hide an advertisement. Any violation of the provisions of this section shall be punished by a fine of $500 for the first violation, $1,000 for a second violation, and $5,000 for a third and any subsequent violations.