Company admits no guilt but will stop using barrages of pop-ups to solicit subscriptions The company operating video download site Movieland.com has agreed to limit its use of pop-up advertisements and not bill customers to stop the ads following legal complaints filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Attorney General’s Office in Washington state.The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California has entered two interim stipulated agreements also prohibiting Digital Enterprises, doing business as Movieland.com, from downloading software onto computers without customer permission, the FTC said Friday. The agreements also require the company to disclose how many pop-up ads it will deliver to customers’ computers.The FTC filed a complaint against Movieland.com, nine partner companies, and two individuals in August, accusing the defendants of flooding customers’ computers with pop-up ads, then demanding $29.95 to make the ads stop. The pop-ups, accompanied by music that lasted nearly a minute, could not be closed or minimized, the FTC said. Movieland.com said consumers had signed up for a three-day “free trial” of the defendants’ Movieland Internet download services and did not cancel their “membership” before the trial period was over, the FTC said.Hundreds of consumers complained to the FTC. Most claimed they had never signed up for the “free trial,” never used Movieland’s services, and never even heard of Movieland until they got their first demand for payment, the FTC said.The defendants made it difficult or impossible for consumers to uninstall the software, the FTC said in its August complaint. Consumers attempting to remove it through the Windows Control Panel Add/Remove function were redirected to a Web page telling them that they had to pay the $29.95 fee to stop the pop-ups. The FTC charged that the defendants’ actions were unfair and deceptive and violated federal law.A trial on the FTC complaints against Movieland.com is scheduled for January 2008, the FTC said. Movieland.com admits no guilt in the stipulated agreement. SecurityTechnology IndustryCareers