First, let me make my opinion clear: The installation of adware should be illegal and harshly punished. Adware has exploded because it offers big economic incentives for its sponsors. They'll never adequately inform PC users about their software before it's installed. This troubling aspect of adware will never be wished away.

In reality, today's tech-illiterate legislatures will never ban adware ... if they could even think of an effective legal approach to do so. We need to engage the battle on a technical level instead.