'Spyware' vendor bangs copyright shield

RetroCoder, developers of the SpyMon remote monitoring program, is brandishing copyright law in a bid to protect its software from being detected by anti-spyware or anti-virus products.

SpyMon is marketed as a means for the paranoid to surreptitiously monitor the activities of their partners or kids online - behaviour that has brought it to the attention of security vendors.

"If you do produce a program that will affect this softwares ability to perform its function then you may have to prove in criminal court that you have not infringed this warning. Infringement of a copyright licence is a criminal offence," RetroCoder's End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) states.

It's questionable whether this agreement would withstand legal challenge but RetroCoder is making good on its threat to take security vendors to task for detecting its product. Anti-spyware maker Sunbelt Software has been sent a nastygram threatening legal action against it for labelling SpyMon as spyware.