Netscape/AOL loses an important appeal

Read Steve Gibson here:

https://grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&group=grc.news&item=333&utag=

Some quotes:

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Gang,

The wheels of justice turn quite slowly. But they do keep grinding
away. Believe it or not, the class action against Netscape, which
resulted from my exposure and publicising of the privacy breaching
nature of Real Network's RealDownload and Netscape's SmartDownload
utilities ... is still moving forward.

Yesterday I received a copy of yesterday's decision, handed down by
the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals, regarding the applicability
of Netscape's web-site based "click wrap" license which states, among
other things, that any dispute will be subject to arbitration rather
than trial.

Naturally, the attorneys who are investing their time and energy in
pursuing this legal action on behalf of the class, need to know that
there's the chance for a possibly significant upside. The Second
Circuit court upheld the lower court's findings that, for several
reasons, Netscape's "click wrap" license claims are invalid.

The plaintiff's allegations that Netscape/AOL's SmartDownload program
was deliberately spying upon them by secretly transmitting private
information about their downloading of files from the Internet,
thereby effecting electronic surveillance of their online activities
in violation of two federal statutes -- the Electronic Communications
Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C pp 2510, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
18 U.S.C pp 1030 -- will now have the chance to be tested by our
courts.
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Read further at the above mentioned link.