I demand pitchforks and angry villagers!

I don't think spam will stop, or even slow down, until a spammer is seriously hurt or killed. Right now, they know there is no consequence to their actions. I'm not saying I personally advocate killing spammers, but it certainly wouldn't make me feel bad to hear about it being done. Spamming would be a lot riskier if there were an element of harm attached for the spammer.

Some dude on Slashdot

Oh wow, you're all freaking insane.

How insane?

Oh, how about THIS MUCH?

That's right, you've all lost the plot. I guess it was listening to me ramble on about Kung-Fu all the time, wasn't it? Hunting down twelve year olds and punting them over fences, demanding Malware maker's heads on spikes and probably burning down their villages and seting up one of those harem things (uh, leave the concubines out though. Thanks).

The root cause of this insanity?

Blue frogs.

No, I haven't gone mad too - Blue Frog is the current buzzword of the moment. In case you don't know, they're an Anti-spamming group that gets you to sign up, run their program and basically bury spammers under vaguely angry sounding I DEMAND YOU LEAVE ME TEH ALONE messages or something. I did have a better description than the above, but it was frankly boring. For a good description, read this.

Oh, and notice how they plaster "Vigilante" over everything for added dramatic effect. Because you can't possibly tackle the scum online that legal-type people have consistently failed to punish without being an angry lunatic who dresses up as Batman in your spare time and scares old people, right?

/ rolls eyes

Anyway, all you need to know is

1) Blue Security had their "list compromised" (except they didn't, but the details of exactly what happened made me bored and I started thinking about other things. Cool stuff I'd like to buy, people I'd like to try my all new and improved PG Punch on, whether to chase my dog or leave it with the ball....stuff like that. Oh, and ask my American counterparts about the PG Punch, they love it).

2) Blue Security proclaimed Independence Day, even though Bill Paxton was the worst President ever and the stupid dog should've died in the tunnel.

3) Blue Security seemingly pointed all their traffic at Typepad, who happen to host the very sexy Paperghost.com and, oh, probably some other stuff too. Unfortunately, they were being smacked around the chops by the word's biggest DoS attack of all time or something, courtesy of one seriously angry spammer. Bye bye, Typepad!

Now the writeup linked to in Point 3 is pretty hard on Blue Security, though someone, somewhere at Blue Security must have thought aiming that kind of traffic at Typepad might have been a touch dense. However, what's more interesting for me is the amount of super-happy hardcore heat generated by this story. Everyone is now running round discussing good ways to kill spammers, whether spamming deserves a death penalty, the previously mentioned pitchforks, how much Blue Security sucks, how much this dead spammer dude sucks, how much Typepad sucks for not handling the DoS....wow. The anger spilling in every direction is incredibly impressive to behold.

Me personally? I wouldn't kill a spammer. I might smack them around a bit for giggles though.

Anyway, go back to your angry-anger fest of doom and let me know when it's over. I'll be hiding under the bed if you need me.