Ding Dong the Witch is Dead -- Claria to Shutter GAIN

News straight from the "there's justice in the world" file...

"As of July 1, the GAIN network will cease to exist and no ads will be served through the system," according to ClickZ. Hallelujah!!!!
The "G" in GAIN was for "Gator," a horrid spyware application that caused annoying popup ads to appear based on the sites people were visiting. Claria tried to soften the impact of their conduct by calling the product "adware" and renaming their company, but they never fooled us, and our memory is long.
Gator is, perhaps more than any single factor, the raison d'être for Stop Piracy Now. Their product nearly put our sister site, the MetroGuide Network, out of business by siphoning off users as they were trying to make hotel reservations on the HotelGuide Network. The use of Gator by one of MetroGuide's former partners, hotels.com, was the centerpiece of a lawsuit filed by MetroGuide against hotels.com. We sat in utter disbelief that a company could do what Claria was doing to web publishers and believe that it was anything other than theft. From our perspective, it was piracy, pure and simple; we did all the work and Claria got all the revenue. What they were doing had to be called out for what it was and stopped. The alternative was that independent websites would cease to exist as functioning businesses.
Claria didn't stop doing what they were doing because they had an ethical epiphany. And as much as we tried over the years to raise awareness of the effects of adware on publishers, no one cared. In the end, GAIN is coming to an end because consumers hate popups and every maker of products such as toolbars and antivirus software was targeting adware for removal. GAIN will go down with the notoriety of having spawned an entire industry of spyware removal products. What a disgraceful legacy.
Although the damage was severe, MetroGuide managed to survive. Thankfully, GAIN did not. Justice delayed may be justice denied, but at least there's some justice in the world after all.
Sayonara, GAIN. Rot in Hell. You won't be missed.

Adware still alive - but dying; Direct Revenue to Pay $300,000 in attorney's fees

Clickz reports in Direct Revenue Settles Adware Suit that the "reformed" adware vendor will be paying $300,000 in attorney's fees and costs as part of a proposed settlement in the case.
We wish we all had more time to keep writing about adware, but thank goodness the problem appears to be dying a slow death, certainly without any assistance from Stop Piracy Now's opinion writing. The Direct Revenue case shows that the harm to consumers is plainly understood, and being ameliorated, but in our opinion publishers will never see justice for the lost revenue to their sites from the loatheful practice of adware. It's a shame; we'll have to chalk that round up to the bad guys.