My eyes, they're rolling!

I'm not sure how something that amounted to "We're going to slam them in a ditch" turned into "go sit in the bad boy corner" but that's exactly what seems to have happened here (in case you didn't know, comScore's Relevant Knowledge was installed via a security exploit, and someone from TRUSTe had said the ban-stick would be liberally applied if that was found to be the case).

For Gods sake, when are we going to stop gimping around and actually break out some actual punishments for people? Either kick someone from your program and be done with it, or admit that attempting to "rate" stuff on the Internet is essentially doomed to failure and just give up already.

The TRUSTe Blog talks about how awesome the anti-spyware community was key in shutting this down before the damage was much greater, and goes on to say:

Vigilance, cooperation, and mutual assistance by the entire online community - anti-spyware companies, third-party certification entities, government enforcement, consumer-complaint mechanisms, and self-policing by "good players" all have roles to play in making the internet a safer place for everyone."

....but what's the point if we have to do it all over again six months later?