There was a time long, long ago when Download.com was the place I went for software. It’s been years, however, as the site repeatedly showed signs of devolving into a site every bit as bothersome as the many third-tier software repositories that hide genuine links below clever-placed advertisements and bundle toolbars with their “certified” local downloads.

At Download.com, page designs have been repeatedly tweaked over the years to push its updater software (now called TechTracker), TrialPay offers, and the site’s mailing list. Bothersome, perhaps, but certainly not inexcusable. They’ve got to make money off the site somehow, after all, and banner ads don’t always do the job. Now, things have taken a turn for the worse: Cnet has begun wrapping downloads in a proprietary installer.

Wrapping installers is a terrible practice. For one thing, it can be a violation of a program’s distribution terms — but Download.com has no doubt ensured that its TOS states that if you let them mirror your files you’re giving them free reign. It’s also a serious slap in the face to users, who wind up not with a clean, genuine version of the installer they tried to download but a modified beast that shoves toolbars, home page, and default search engines changes down their throats.

But it gets worse. Cnet knows that there’s something wrong with what they’re doing, and they’re trying to deceive developers and users. On the Upload.com FAQ, there’s a note posted to let developers know why the bundling is taking place: “for the users.” Yes, Cnet thinks we’re clueless enough to believe that their motivation is really to provide users with a less painful download and installation process. Because opt-out toolbars and homepage changes make software setup less annoying.

If the installer was designed so that users could opt-in to the toolbar install or browser setting changes, things might be a little different. The way it stands now what Download.com is doing is totally unacceptable. Here’s hoping they come to their senses — or that Microsoft at least steps in to temporarily put a halt to the practice. Cnet’s bundling Bing, after all, and having your brand pushed as bloatware is never a good thing.

Update: Not every program is currently being wrapped — but they will be wrapped once a new version of a program is uploaded and distributed via Download.com. If the downloaded filename begins with “cnet_” then look elsewhere for the download. As you can see from the image above, even the GPL’d free-as-in-speech-and-beer VLC is wrapped by Cnet.

Read more at Hacker News and gHacks