Chris Boyd (aka Paperghost) reported last week on his Spyware Guide blog about a dodgy offer for a “Free Online Batman Game” that in reality installed Zango and a crappy demo version of an ancient game that you could have downloaded for free somewhere else. It should not take more than a few brain cells to figure out that DC Comics is not coming to you with an online Batman game that nobody knows about and has not been mentioned in the press.
This shows you need to be wary still. Who knows how much either side knew, but when you have such an obvious misrepresentation you really have to wonder. Did people just look the other way for a buck?
I gotta imagine the owners of the batman trademarks would be interested in seeing documentation of this, assuming an agreement between them and Zango/MetricsDirect doesn’t exist already.
I continue to believe these companies will find their undoing outside of adware legislation, things like copyright infringement, tax evasion, nefarious installs, pii violations, poison pills that break anti-competitive legal bars (one’s aimed at their competitors) and so on. They have learned how to avoid the issues that are at the heart of the matter, namely interference with online commercial activity (that would never be tolerated in the offline realm).