RadLight 3.03 R5.2 kills Ad-Aware!!

[Amerzone]

Be careful with the new Radlight player version 3.03 R5.2 It is confirmed that, apart from including spyware to be installed (at user choice, thanks God...) it uninstalls on purpose the Ad-Aware excellent tool. For more, have a look at:

[list=1]
http://www.lavasoft.nu/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=3cc5a16002a7ffff;act=ST;f=20;t=13
http://www.lavasoft.nu/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=3cc5a16002a7ffff;act=ST;f=20;t=14
[/list=1]

The Radlight official answer from their moderator is here (http://216.194.92.96/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=216)

Shame on Radlight, this is behaviour expected from a trojan horse, not a media player... :mad:

[trbarry]

Well, that sounds fairly intrusive. Yuck.

- Tom

[Ookami]

That means that RadLight will be removed from my Freeware list, as it isn't freeware anymore... I just hate it, when someone claims "Freeware" and then it's "banner ware", "spyware" or something like that :( .

Yeah, and Lavasoft earns money on your fear :rolleyes: . I prefer not to install spyware at all, but as some people are inventing new, stupid names for spyware you have to be Sherlock Holmes to always know it BEFORE installing a certain program :( .

Whatever, I'm not wasting my time anymore, I would not have expected this from the RadLight team, it seems that certain people are correct about them.

BTW, this is my personal opinion and has nothing to do with Doom9 or the team. Only to prevent...

Cheers,

Mijo.

[MaTTeR]

I seen this article today and I have to say it's fairly disturbing to see RadLight make a move like this.

Installing SpyWare is one thing but installing malicous behaving software such as this is all together another story.

I suppose we should expect some sort of legal suit filed pretty soon. After all this action is illegal right?:angry: :angry:

Very disapointed in RadLight and further more the reaction statement they made to this isn't encouraging to say the least. Perhaps they need to hire an PR manager after pulling this stunt:D

[pei]

In my opinion, this is MUCH worse than spyware, this actually removes files (WHOLE PROGRAMS) (Ad-Aware) from your system and does god knows what else. Just so their optional spyware they include with it can run right? :mad:

It really is sad what people will try to do to make money nowdays. (2 ways to develop software people, free, or not-free) Can't we just cut out the crap with the spyware and ads and everything? :scared:

And the logic RedScorpion had for making it remove the Ad-Aware? He posted something like (don't quote me) 'They remove my software, I remove theirs and we are 1:1' :scared:

I just want to know what the world is coming to? :confused:

[BlackSun]

spyware sucks. Seems that the lavasoft is angry

[Nic]

As I said to BetaBoy last night, it just makes your player look even more attractive BlackSun :D

-Nic

[BlackSun]

Hehe, of course no spywares for PowerDivX 4 !!

[Mac Sidewinder]

RedScorpion's logic of removing ad-aware as a defensive measure is severly flawed. Gee I wonder why it does this WITHOUT telling you first? I hate software thats supported by adware that you can't disable. But to remove other software to replace it with your own is criminal.

Hey BlackSun - I wonder if anyone would notice if your player deleted windows media player.

Mac

[ChristianHJW]

Folks, there are always 2 sides to be seen here.

You know i am a 100% PowerDivX man and i will support Blacksun in every respect to make this excellent player a real succes.

But lets face it : we may be in the same situation one day !!

We are in the lucky situation now that both our board and the player downloads are hosted for absolutely free on another server. Now have a look what simtel says about the nr. of downloads :

Category: WinME / Win98 / Win95 / Multimedia Programs
Publisher: BlackSunSoft
Website: http://www.blacksunsoft.fr.st
Program Name: PowerDivX NextGen, Version 3.12
File Name: pdivx312.zip
Downloads: 44991 since 12/08/2001
Ware Type: Freeware
System: Win95,Win98,WinME,WinNT 4.x,WinXP,Windows2000
File Size: 1714365
File Date: 2001-12-08 02:43:00
Description: PowerDivX NextGen is a powerfull media player


44991 downloads since 12th, August 2001 !!!. With a size of about 1.6 MB this equals about 9 GB/month .... now it should be quite easy for you to find out what will happen if we launch PowerDivX 4 and only half of the old, existing users go downloading it in the first 2 months after launching date, plus some 20.000 - 30.000 pissed of Radlight users :D . Nice, but ... who is going to pay for that ?

I am waiting for the day when the admin from the server we're on will give us notice he cant host us anymore .... so what's coming next ?

For sure no agressive spyware deinstalling ad-aware ( very bad move from Radlight team IMHO ), but where to get the money ?? Asking for donations ? Good laugh .... i guess Doom9 ( sitting on 200 GB traffic / months if i remember correctly ) can sing a song here and we also had everwicked asking for donations lately or his site was to be closed.

I am an internet user myself and i do have the very same attitude about paying for things, means i expect everything to be free. Coders like Blacksun, Tronic, TheWEV, Tobias, etc. .... they can and will work for free if you , this is the users of the soft, show them you use it and you're happy with it.

But the servers for distribution of the software do cost !! Thats a matter of fact. So .... i certainly dont hinder you from flaming the Radlight team for what they did. But i wouldnt be astonished if they decided to drop the player completely. Why should they invest their energy and time into the player, and on top of it pay for distributing it to you, the users ??

Looking forward to your comments how this situation could be best resolved, it may happen to PowerDivX ( or CoreCodec ) Player also, one day .. who knows ??

[MaTTeR]

Like I stated before, installing data mining software to make a little money on a nice peice of software is ok in my mind. I certainlly don't have a problem paying for a good product.

However, I don't see two sides of the story with Radlight though. I think the malicous intent is clear and furthermore there response to this issue leaves no doubt in my mind.

In regards to the anticipated realease of Power Divx 4, I'm not sure what the answer could be. Perhaps having the full/Pro DVD playback version as shareware:)

[BlackSun]

Well, I suppose we'll have a lot of downloads when PowerDivX 4 will be released. But Doom9 will handle this nicely :D

Anyway I am against spyware, Chris is right who know...

[Ookami]

@Christian

I agree with the "who knows" sentence. But my answer to such statements is always "who cares?"!

I mean, even I had a banner :scared: (altough a short time) in my FreeList...

The main thing is (this applies to all software):

a) don't call software freeware that isn't free
b) if you don't have the time or will to do it for free say it so and make no lame excuses
c) who cares?

It's like "Oh! I killed them because they made fun of me. I'm only 50% guilty!"...

Er, that's all... BTW, there are VERY cheap webproviders with unlimited bandwith (not in Croatia for sure :( )... And like some people said in the linked thread, there are other ways to make money than supporting spyware.

Cheers,

Mijo.

[Swede]

Let's face it. NOONE likes any program doin' anything without asking permission!
And I *really* do think that this community of people, contributing what they've got, no matter how small, is the only way to go. I'm an old school guy who've been around for 20 years(!), doin' my best, trying to learn new things every day, h*ll I've promised doom9 that I'd look into changes in this board without *ever* even seen a line of PHP-code, but I do believe that *everyone* can contribute, no matter how small, so...
Please, everyone, be humble! Read up! Use the search button! Don't ask a question that's been answered a XXX times! I'll have to admit that I'm one lucky guy with a cheap, fast connection but what am I using it for? Well, doom9 knows... I'm pumping almost 140 GB A MONTH! For nothing? I think not! I really DO think that the hours I put down means a difference for some people, but?

[Hanty]

I don't think the spyware part is such a big deal with radlight, I can always firewall out SaveNow. I however cannot stand hypocrites that try to rationalize the unauthorized removal of an application I choose to use and rather like. That is the strategy of a virusmaker.

[theReal]

Apart from that it's nasty tactics, what do they think will be the profit for their spyware? First, you install Radlight, then want to run ad-aware - but it's uninstalled. So, you instantly install ad-aware again and remove the spyware. The only benefit for radlight will be that people will be looking for other software because of an unnecessary annoyance in installation.

Glad I have never used it anyways ;)

[Nic]

I sure appreciate it Swede :D

Cheers,
-Nic

[saVe]

it's time to create a new term: stealware

there's no other word for this: STEALING programs from my computer. taking away with my permission is okay, but not asking to do so is a criminal act imho.

[trbarry]

I have never yet seen anyone comment on it but I would not be surprised if eventually there was an attempt to prosecute some spyware vendor under one of the new computer crimes acts.

The only defense would be to make it first obvious to the user what the costs and side effects were of installing some software, and I don't mean in hidden fine print somewhere.

And I'm guessing that to the extent any of this causes incidental damages there could be some interesting liability.

But I am, of course, not a lawyer. ;)

- Tom

[chemmajik]

Man I'm glad I read this post, I been looking at Radlight to check it out for a week now on my hd, but haven't installed it yet.