The Supreme Court ruling against file-sharing software was clearly wrongheaded — but an odd byproduct of the decision may be that there will be less spyware in the world.

By ruling that makers of file-sharing software can be sued, the court made it all but certain that many of those companies will be put out of business.

What does this have to do with spyware? Plenty. Makers of most file-sharing software aren’t intellectual groundbreakers — they’re only in it for the money. And their business models use spyware as their revenue engine. Download their free software, and spyware comes along for the ride. For example, Computer Associates, makers of the antispyware Pest Patrol, calls Kazaa the number one spyware threat on the Internet because of how much spyware it downloads to your PC.

The Supreme Court decision means there will be fewer file-sharing apps available for download, and so less spyware will be distributed.

Don’t get me wrong; I think the Supreme Court ruling was absolutely wrong, and in the long run, the ruling may stifle innovation. But it’s also one more example of the law of unintended consequences, and in this instance, one of the unintended consequences is a good one.

What do you think of the Supreme Court’s decision?

One of the Internet’s great promises is that the free expression and the free exchange of ideas it allows will lead to greater freedom and democracy across the world.

Dictators and authoritarian governments hate the Internet for that very reason, and do their best to try and squelch its use. That’s to be expected. But what’s not to be expected is that Microsoft would play along with them, and happily do their bidding.

That’s what’s going on in China right now. In fact, Microsoft may even be more zealous in squashing people’s opinions than is the Chinese government itself.

In China, Microsoft operates an MSN Spaces site, and Microsoft has been heavily censoring people’s posts on it. How heavily? Well, if you want to use the words “freedom” “democracy” or “human rights” in a blog, you’re out of luck. A Microsoft filter will refuse to let you post.

When asked why Microsoft is playing footsie with China’s authoritarian government, Brooke Richardson, MSN lead product manager, issued this statement: “MSN abides by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates.”

It’s bad enough that Microsoft is doing the Communist government’s bidding. But, in fact, Microsoft appears to go even beyond government censorship, says Isaac Mao, who according to Wired News is a tech entrepreneur, and one of China’s first bloggers. Mao told Wired News that even the government doesn’t ban words like “freedom” and “democracy.”

It’s clear that all Microsoft is thinking about here is the almighty dollar — well, make that the almighty yuan. But history has taught us that there’s a morality beyond the dollar bill, and that ultimately businesses will be held to account for their relationships with dictators and authoritarians.

Which side of history will Microsoft be on? For now, sadly, the answer is the wrong one.

What do you think about Microsoft’s censoring of blogs in China?

You think spyware is bad now?

As Al Jolsen famously said, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”

Just consider a few predictions from Richard Stiennon, director of threat research at anti-spyware vendor Webroot.

His top prediction — spyware will be released this year that targets Firefox. No longer will smug Firefox users, me among them, say that our favorite browser is immune from pests.

But there’s worse still. He believes that RSS will become a conduit for for malware. Along with news and blog updates, we’ll be hit with adware, home page hijackers, and spyware.

Particularly worrisome, he says, is that one of the major blogging services could end up having a vulnerability that malware writers exploit, which would instantly infect countless people who subscribe to RSS feeds. The infection could spread like lightning because of the automated nature of RSS.

Stiennon doesn’t suggest any quick fixes. Because he works at an anti-spyware firm, you may think that he’s trying to scare people into buying his software. But he’s not. Even if these predictions aren’t correct, the spyware threat will continue to balloon.

There’s no single way to stop spyware from growing. But there is one that will help, and that no one talks about. That’s to punish those who benefit from the spyware scourge — the advertisers who benefit from pop up blizzards and home page hijacking. Once they start hurting, they’ll police how their ads are used, which in turn will cut off money to spyware purveyors.

Cutting off the money flow will go a long way toward solving the problem.

But don’t expect to see the feds take action — after all, this is the same crew that passed the Can Spam Act which only helped to increase the amount of spam we receive.

How would you solve the spyware scourge?

Remember when file-sharing networks were going to End Civilization As We Know It?

The entire music industry would fold because people would stop buying CDs, and would never pay to download music. Book publishing would follow suit. The barbarians were at the gates, and they were wielding civilization-busting tools like Napster and Kazaa.

Well, our civilization still seems to be standing somehow — and word just came out that iTunes is more popular than file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and iMesh, and is in a dead heat with LimeWire. Of the top ten music downloading services, three were for-pay — iTunes, Napster and RealPlayer Store.

This proves what I’ve said all along: If people are given a way to easily download and pay for music, they’ll do that, and forgo file-sharing networks.

Expect iTunes to become even more popular, and other for-pay music services to move up the list as well. And once the music industry finally embraces for-pay downloads — something they haven’t yet done enthusiastically — for-pay services will dominate. Ultimately, that will become the main method of distributing music.

Ideally, rather than having to run different clients for different music services, there would be one piece of software that interacts with all of them. Windows Media Player would be the logical choice for this. But Windows Media Player is a sloppy kludge. It’s fine for playing online videos. But as a music player and manager it’s a pretty awful piece of work.

Here’s hoping that even more for-pay music services take root, and that someone can write a simple client for accessing them all.

What do you think about iTunes and file-sharing networks?

Join us in O’Reilly’s booth (#1046) for a series of author presentations throughout the week. And, don’t miss our new .NET T-shirt– available in limited quanities after each presentation. Get em’ while they last.

Monday – June 6th
2:00 - 2:30PM James Avery - Visual Studio Hacks
6:30 - 7:00PM JayHilyard and Stephen Teilhet — C# Cookbook
7:30 - 8:00PM Laura Hunter (Syngress)

Tuesday – June 7th
2:30 - 3:00PM Juval Lowy - Defensive Event Publishing in .NET
3:15 - 3:45PM Mike Danseglio — Windows Malware
4:30 - 5:00PM James Avery — Visual Studio Hacks

Wednesday – June 8th
3:15 - 3:45PM James Avery — Visual Studio Hacks

Thursday – June 9th
1:15- 1:45PM James Avery — Visual Studio Hacks
2:30 - 3:00PM Kevin Kline — SQL in a Nutshell

At long last, Microsoft has announced it will finally get rid of those annoying “My” names it tacks in front of folders. When Longhorn hits, there will be no folders named My Documents, My Pictures and so on. Instead, they’ll just be labeled Documents, Pictures, etc.

Finally! I’ve found those “My” folders nearly as annoying as the animated Search dog that crawls out from its kennel when you do an XP search, or the moronic “Clippy” paper clip that pops up when you ask for help in Office. In fact, there’s only one virtual being more annoying than Clippy — the universally reviled Jar Jar Binks. And George Lucas has managed to essentially make him vanish in the latest Star Wars pic.

Let’s hope that Microsoft uses Longhorn to clear up other interface problems and annoyances as well. How about finally making some sense of the Frequently Used Programs List — the changing list of programs that appears on the left side of the Start menu. There appears to be no rhyme or reason why some programs show up there, and others don’t. Programs I use every day somehow don’t make it there. Others I use rarely seem never to leave the list.

How about you? What kinds of interface problems and annoyances would you like to see Microsoft clean up in Longhorn? Let me know, below.

What kinds of interface annoyances should Microsoft tackle in Longhorn?