I think that best practices can be reflected in the legislation. If I, for example, have downloaded a program that enables me to open certain applications or see videos or hear sounds, that's what I see now. When there's an update ready, I am asked if I want that update. The best practices are that while the updates are being downloaded, I just reduce them to the bottom of the screen, and I can go on using the computer.
It's very different when you're talking about some security patches or applications that really have to be downloaded automatically. That also includes certain types of transactions during which it's not quite clear that there's an actual program being downloaded. That's where I say we have to talk to our technical people and ask how many transactions like that don't really represent the format of “Do you want an update to this particular program you've installed? Click yes.” And you know exactly what it's for. For some of them, if they are trying to fix some vulnerabilities in your computer, there's a timing factor and a complexity. There's a question of explaining what they're for, whereas conversely if you want to go after malware, you can write down the five or six things that constitute malware. They include modifying settings of other programs, collecting personal or financial information of the computer's owner, activating keystroke logging software to collect personal information, attempting to block or uninstall existing anti-spyware, collecting browser history and bookmark list, or preventing the user from removing spyware programs.
You could run down the list and make them subparagraphs in the definition of spyware, and you would get pretty much universal agreement to them. By regulation, any other similar thing could be equally prohibited, and you've covered the universe. You're trying to cover the universe of downloads, but what's the downloading of an applet or JavaScript? Is that a program? Does that lend itself to approval or requesting approval? Does it make the functioning of the Internet a lot more cumbersome?
That's where you really would have to get a group of people around the table, and you would never be totally comfortable that you'd covered all the cases of things that are good that you don't want to prohibit. That's why it's so easy to write down the bad things. Just list them and you've done what you've tried to achieve.