• by Ari Rosenberg , Op-Ed Contributor, July 8, 2005

It takes longer for the picture on my television to show up after I turn it on. Then when I click to channel three to watch ESPN, I am greeted instead with listings promoting everything from sports gambling to adult services. This just started happening out of the blue one day.

Bizarrely, my radio is doing the same thing. I tune into 880 expecting to hear John Sterling and Susan Waldman announce the Yankee game, and instead am greeted with an unfamiliar voice suggesting a myriad of options other than the one I have chosen. Even more frustrating, the repair shop said they would have to take both the TV and radio apart and rebuild it from scratch. Even then, they cannot promise it will fix the problem.

Could you imagine the public outrage if what I just shared was true?

Welcome to a column for those who have heard about the war being waged against online advertising's cottage industry of spyware, but have not caught up to the technological details of the battle.

I first learned of spyware in 2000 (also referred to as adware) when I worked at Snowball.com. My president at the time explained this emerging business with an equally emerging smile. He said it was software that would secretly interrupt the surfing experience of the user, and present link options that would earn the publisher money if clicked on. I smiled awkwardly as if I understood him, but all I understood was that something sounded wrong with what he just shared. Only years later, when my home computer was "spywared," did I fully understand the ad product he was so excited about.

My computer would open up to a fake content search page despite my clear directions to make Yahoo! my home page. This "content search" page listed options based on projected interests defined by my Web content interactions. To add insult to my emotional injury, my computer was much slower. There are more extreme examples of the affects of Spyware that are difficult to explain, and more devious when understood. The product is like a detour for a road with no issues. Eventually you get to where you want to go, but you are frustrated for taking longer than it needed to.

The online advertising industry is now watching closely something called the I-Spy Act. Currently in Congress, if passed, it would place harsh penalties on any company that furnishes spyware-type products. Two weeks ago, New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer settled the first case in his public-empowered assault on spyware with a company called Intermix, which left the company unable to resemble itself prior to the case.

What is troubling to those in the business of online advertising is the broadness of the I-Spy Act, which if defined too broadly, will include "cookies." Cookies do technically spy on your online behavior, but more like a mother trying to help a grown son without asking. The problem is that choices are made for you without your consent and that will always feel uncomfortable.

Spyware is a product portfolio born on the collective watch of Internet advertising. If introduced to radio or television, the public outcry would be deafening, but as usual, Internet advertising confuses those outside its circles with language that is meant to do just that.

As wrong as it all sounded to me years ago, it sounded just as right to those who saw the economic gain over the consumer pain. Today however, enough noise has been made supporting the latter that formal protection is being sought from a medium that has clearly overstepped its boundaries.

Whether the act of cookies is affected by this pending act remains to be seen. But to pull a quote from a recently enjoyed book called "Freakonomics," Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."