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Spammers Sue Anti-Spam Groups
SuperBanana writes "The Register reports in a story today that spammers have banded together under the name EmarketersAmerica.org to sue various anti-spam groups- days before a large conference on spam hosted by the FTC(which will be attended by many spammers). Anti-spam groups think the timing is not by coincidence, but believe the move may backfire because they will be able to countersue and get access to spammer's internal documents. By the way, if you're wondering who these guys are, check out Spamhaus's directory of top spammers."
Think about this the next time you advocate centralizing the Net (in terms of SMTP) on large ISPs in order to "solve" the problem of residental users spewing spam (directly or by relay).
The residential users are annoying because there are so many of them, but if, 10 years from now, the only way you can send mail is to relay through a large ISP's mail servers... who do you think said ISP's best business partners will be?
For an answer to that question look to the US Postal Service's largest customers: The US Federal Government and bulk mailers.
THAT is exactly the business niche that spammers are evolving into. All they need is for users to have slightly less choice and ISPs to have slightly more power to tell their users how the Internet works rather than the other way around.
Push to keep the Internet a network of peers while establishing a system of identity, trust and responsibility (which should in turn also by non-centralized, but rooted on an arbitrary number of certificate authorities and trust databases), and you will do yourself and the rest of the world a large favor!
We know which companies sell their email listings, right?
More than a few of us can write a script...
A clandestine server running in an undisclosed location--perhaps a public wireless hotspot--can go forever properly filling out the forms of these companies with complete and total gibberish.
It won't crash servers... nobody will even know until it's pretty much too late and the offended databases are loaded with utter garbage.
Recently, I wrote about passively doing this to spambots. I keep the page on the server for good measure.
My tech articles are geared to a nontech audience so don't give me crap if they sound lame. I don't preach to the choir except when hanging out at Slashdot.
That said, I don't see why this concept can't be expanded. They have no defense against form scripts.
Laws are for people with no friends.