Businessweek has a great article about the spyware/popup business.  It’s interesting that there hasn’t been a more concerted effort to deny these companies money by shaming their advertisers, even though that is the one tactic proven to be effective.  I suppose the quote from one of their technical guys is most appropriate:

Among Direct
Revenue’s alumni, pride over technical cunning mingles with regret for
exasperating so many computer users. After waffling on the issue during
a long interview, one former Dark Arts wizard sighs and sums up his
version of the company credo with an elegiac observation by
abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “Find out just what any people will
quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice
and wrong which will be imposed upon them.”

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