Edward Felten at Freedom to Tinker reports on Utah's Anti-Spyware Bill:

The Utah state legislature has passed an anti-spyware bill, which now awaits the governor's signature or veto. The bill is opposed by a large coalition of infotech companies, including Amazon, AOL, AT&T, eBay, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo.

The bill bans the installation of spyware on a user's computer. The core of the bill is its definition of "spyware", which includes both ordinary spyware (which captures information about the user and/or his browsing habits, and sends that information back to the spyware distributor) and adware (which displays uninvited popup ads on a user's computer, based on what the user is doing).

He provides a good quick summary of the bill. Spyware affects network connections and computer function. It plays on people's trust and makes it more difficult for technical support staff to do their jobs (once burned/twice shy--people don't want to install anything, even things that can help them).