What a noble goal: a community watch online for spyware, malware, and adware (the really insidious kind anyway). The stated mission of Stopbadware.org is this: "We will seek to provide reliable, objective information about downloadable applications in order to help consumers to make better choices about what they download on to their computers. We aim to become a central clearinghouse for research on badware and the bad actors who spread it, and to become a focal point for developing collaborative, community-minded approaches to stopping badware."

Sounds good, doesn't it? The organizers behind this include the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Oxford Internet Institute, and Consumer Reports WebWatch. There are some corporate sponsors too: Google, Lenovo, and Sun. Hopefully more will jump on board (ahem, Microsoft?) and lend even more power to this movement. Quite frankly, how this got out of hand so quickly is a testament to the power of the internet, and the uneducated masses using said technology. Now that people have been stung though, it's good to give 'em a place to complain. I'm just hoping the complaints turn into real action on the part of netizens. Next time you or someone you know gets hit with badware send them to the site and have them tell their story.