A win for the bad guys
Via Dan Gillmor comes news that one of the world's biggest spammers has forced an anti-spam company to shut its doors.
The article is a little hazy on exactly how the spammer, a Russian, did it. But the head of the company insists that the level of effort and money required to defeat spammers at this level will have to come from governments working in concert, not from private industry.
The problem with that approach, Gillmor notes, is that it almost certainly will involve a significant loss of privacy. But if spammers are left to their own devices, then e-mail, the Internet's first killer app, becomes worthless.
There aren't any good choices here. Perhaps the Russians will take care of this guy the way they did one of his peers last year.
