The reaction here is exactly why spammers get away with their obscene art and profits.

If all the recipients of their fallacious outpourings got together and reciprocated, their lives and practices would become impossible.

For the most part, so called legal remedies are impossible. Even if the perpetrators live and operate in your own legal jurisdiction, proving they are responsible is nigh impossible. If they live or operate outside your jurisdiction, forget any possibility of legal redress.

Comparisons with vigilantism are puerile. A better analogy is the residence of streets plagued with drug dealers and vice that took back their streets by observing, and filming and generally being noticed.

If the knowledgeable recipients of spam put their heads and resources together, they could out-spam the spammers and render the positives of their practices so drowned in negatives that winnowing the wheat from the chaff would become impossible.

Whilst the knowledgeable stand by and do nothing but look the other way--I'm all right jack, I've got XYZ to stop me from seeing the crap--then the profit margins from responses by the less knowledgeable will mean the spam will continue, and the weak will continue to be ripped off.

The spammers aren't clever, just callous and persistent and reliant on nobody bothering, or feeling they have the right to fight back. A concerted effort by the knowledgeable could render them impotent.


In reply to Re: (OT) Is retaliation ethical if a spam source can be identified beyond a reasonable doubt? by Anonymous Monk
in thread (OT) Is retaliation ethical if a spam source can be identified beyond a reasonable doubt? by leocharre

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.