OK, Kuroyume, except that legislation HAS been passed - bad, bad legislation that makes spamming a legitimate activity. This is thanks to direct marketing associations pouring some of their money into Washington and getting their own language into the CAN SPAM act (which has rightly been characterized as the "now you CAN SPAM act.") So don't hold your breath on that one.

Most spam still comes form the US? Sure it does - that's the biggest pool of computers with high-speed connections suitable for sending spam. If we can't educate people to stop clicking on spam e-mails, how are we ever going to inform them that "hey, remember that nice waterfall screensaver you downloaded last summer and then deleted around Thanksgiving? Well, it was really a carrier for a trojan horse program that has been running on your computer ever since, and even now some sleazeball in Romania is using your cable connection to send out spam." Unfortunately most people haven't a clue what is meant by y0ur b0>< i5 0wn3d, d00d.

BTW, Phantast - this is the reason taking out the Florida guy is pointless. Let's even suppose you convict him  - a REALLY big if. His lawyer is as nasty and underhanded as he is, and the jury probably includes at least a few spam-clicker types. But say you get him. He walks free in 6 months, moves to Georgia, turns on his PC and checks in with his army of remote spam-bots. Yep, there they all are, or at least most of them. He's back in business.

Some people did question Blue Frog's tactics, but really they were just harvesting the power of the Internet to allow their users to reply LAWFULLY to spams they received, as provided for by the CAN-SPAM act. They simply aggregated the replies and were a bit forceful in how they delivered them.

As for redirecting malicious traffic, yes that is what happened, but I don't think it was their intent. This spammer shut down their website, and they had to communicate with their users somehow and let them know what was going on. So they made a posting to their blog about being attacked. Then the spammer attacked the site that hosted their blog and brought that down too. It's easy in hindsight to say they should have known he would do this, but really. If you've been mugged, and you go out to a restaurant with some firends to recover from the shock, is it your fault if the mugger follows you there and starts shooting up the place?

I think the Blue Frog swan song page summed it up nicely. Spamming is a branch of organized crime, not a legitimate business, no matter what its high-profile defenders might say. You don't send a security guard or a neighborhood watch patrol to deal with the mob. You send the police, the FBI and the full legal weight of the court system. If the guy is in Russia, you put enough political and economic pressure on the Russians that they deal with it. And, even more importantly, you put a LOT of pressure on the domestic entities that are enabling or abetting the activity.

That is, you WOULD do these things IF you didn't have a big campaign check from the Direct Marketing Association or Verizon in your breast pocket :m_pig:

• Jimdoria  ~@>@