[liberationtech] Does anti–malware have a use other than make some people money?

[anon14959 at Safe-mail.net]

I’ve seen online many people ridiculing Mr. Stallman for his uncompromising position. But he seems to have given us the world of open source and some more. On the Windows boxes I run several anti-malware apps, all containing «malware» or «spy» in the name. These apps are free, and regularly updated. They seem to take time and money. Time to develop them. Money for the update servers. On the other side there are thugs. Thugs that try to insinuate into your computer. And thugs that use the power of the law to enter your computer. The latter kind has the ability to gag you for lawful reasons, which are far worse than a guy threatening to break your legs. And here comes the main issue: all these apps are freeware. Meaning somebody with skill higher than high-school computer science has to reverse engineer them and that person is not legally allowed to publish the patch.

So, from your experience, am I wasting CPU and power on all these malware fighting apps? Or Windows Firewall does about the same damage?