I am trying to catch up on my John Cook reading, and ran across something confusing.

Now, I don’t know that much about the WSA, but it stands to reason that any formal Association that supports Washington Software Companies would have some pretty high bars when rounding out its executive board.  And I don’t know Keith Smith personally, but I can read things on the Internet about his company, Zango (formerly 180 Solutions)

Some excerpts from simple google searches:

In my testing, 180 software specifically and systematically causes merchants’ tracking systems to conclude that users reached merchants’ sites thanks to 180’s efforts, even when users actually reached merchants on their own or through other affiliates. As a result, merchants pay commissions to 180 even when no commission is properly payable. In addition, 180 causes merchants to pay commissions to 180 even when commission is properly payable to other affiliates. – http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/180-affiliates/

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) Monday accused 180solutions, one of the world’s largest developers of Internet advertising software, of "deliberately and repeatedly" engaging in illegal and deceptive spyware practices. – http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3579576

Just when 180solutions’ CEO Keith Smith is whining about anti-spyware companies, or to use his words “scanning applications”, Spyware Warrior has captured another 180solutions installation with no notice and no consent through a security exploit. From a crack site, too. Nice. Way. To. Go. – http://netrn.net/spywareblog/archives/2005/11/29/anti-spyware-zealot-rants-about-180solutions/

Again, I don’t know Smith or the company personally.   But when your Board of Directors includes Google, RealNetworks, Amazon, Microsoft, etc…you would think an invitation to join that board would at the very least require not being sued by the FTC, or not incurring the wrath of every Spyware watchdog advocate on the planet.  It seems like this is kind of like Jeff Skilling being invited to join a committee of oversight in the energy industry.  

So just to be clear, I’m not making a value judgement here, but I think it’s an interesting selection to what is supposed to be a respected board.