Remember last month, when some SOPA supporters were pretending that because the Business Software Alliance (BSA) supported SOPA, it meant that all of its member companies supported SOPA too? Yeah, well, that resulted in the BSA backing down, after it realized (with some prompting from Microsoft) that perhaps SOPA wasn't such a good thing. It appears that that's not enough for some tech companies. Anti-virus firm Kaspersky has announced that it's dumping its association with the BSA because of its support for SOPA. The company says that it "does not support this initiative," explaining:

We believe that such measures will be used contrary to the modern advances in technology and the needs of consumers.

Perhaps the BSA will learn to not be so quick on the draw in the future to support every single idea to make copyright more and more draconian.

Infamous adware maker Zango may finally be dead, but its lawsuits live on. You may recall a few years back Zango sued security software maker Kaspersky for calling its product "spyware." A court found that Kaspersky has every right to label the software as it feels is appropriate, noting that it's immune from complaints from Zango under section 230 of the CDA.

Zango appealed, claiming that Kaspersky shouldn't be immune because the CDA was only supposed to apply to websites, not software makers. The 9th circuit appeals court clearly disagrees and points out that this is exactly the sort of thing Section 230 should protect. It's always nice to see courts reaffirm the immunity granted by Section 230 -- especially since those protections have been under attack lately. Update: Eric Goldman has more.

You can already hear the Apple and Linux fans snickering about this one, but security software firm Kaspersky accidentally classified Windows Explorer as a virus to be quarantined earlier this week. Explorer.exe, of course, is pretty crucial for doing just about anything in Windows, so it probably didn't go over so well with the folks impacted by it. Amusingly, as the article notes, Kaspersky made fun of Microsoft earlier this year when Microsoft's own anti-virus offering quarantined or deleted Microsoft Outlook files. And, of course, last year we also had a story about how Kaspersky's software flagged Microsoft's own anti-virus software as a virus as well. In other words... these anti-virus programs still have some kinks to work out.

All too often, we've seen cases where security software firms were sued for calling some piece of software "spyware" or "adware." In fact, Microsoft even wanted to make sure that new anti-spyware legislation would make it clear that there's nothing wrong with calling spyware "spyware." However, in the latest ruling on one of these cases (in which Zango sued Kaspersky), the ruling makes it clear we already have such a law on the books. The judge dismissed the lawsuit, noting that security firms have every right to label software as they see fit, citing part of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

We often point to section 230, because it protects service providers from liability for the actions of the service providers' users. However, this is referring to a different part of section 230, which says that no service provider is liable for a good faith attempt to restrict access to something it deems objectionable. The court felt that the security company was a service provider, and that since it believed Zango was objectionable, then it has every right to try to restrict it. The court makes a second very important point. Zango complains that its software is not objectionable, and therefore the security providers cannot block it as objectionable. However, the court points out that the statute clearly says that it's for what the service provider finds objectionable. In other words, the content in question need not be "objectionable" at all -- it only matters what the service provider feels about it. This is a pretty strong endorsement for the idea that security companies absolutely can call software whatever they feel is appropriate.