Court: Network Associates can't gag users - Tech News - CNET.com: In a victory for free-speech advocates and product reviewers, a New York state judge has ruled that Network Associates can't prevent people from talking about its products. New York state Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Shafer issued a ruling, made public this week, prohibiting the security software specialist from trying to use its end-user license agreements to ban product reviews or benchmark tests. [...] Network Associates said it plans to appeal the ruling. "I just don't see how we've deceived anyone," said Kent Roberts, executive vice president and general counsel for Network Associates. "Our goal here was to actually increase the amount of information available to customers."
OK, that's a novel approach to "increase the amount of information available to customers." Tell them they can't talk about the product without your permission and then demand retraction when they do. Apparently, there is some meaning to the word "increase" that is not immediately apparent to most human beings, since apparently it is also a synonym for "decrease and/or silence." Who knew?
Posted by iain at January 18, 2003 10:34 PMComments
Lessee... they were trying to increase access to information by decreasing noise so that the S/N ratio rose. See, their product is flawless, so any criticism would be false and would only mislead. By preventing criticism they could make it so that potential customers would not be mislead.
Howzat?
Posted by Steven Den Beste at January 19, 2003 02:14 PM
