wouldn't it be more productive to sue the money out of them?

Suing the crap out of them sounds more painful though. And that would be good.

I'd prefer it if the authorites brought back the naval practice of keel-hauling for spammers.

Under what legal theory? Remember, Blogger/blogspot is free, and Blogger/Google can't sue to recover for your "injury," only for their own, and they already have a remedy, namely canceling accounts that violate their TOS.

Sue, schmue. One spammer, one bullet.

If you're feeling nasty, one spammer, two bullets, and take out both kneecaps.

TOS abuse is actionable... certainly so given these guys are causing blogger 'actual damages'.

Shut them in a room with The Collected Works Of Robert Fisk for a few weeks and they'll begging to be permitted to live a righteous spam-free life for ever after.

Recidivists would be required to read John Pilger's autobiography.

Perry,
Isn't there some kind of software-bot that you could use to ping the spam sites and search for keywords such as "Viagra", "hot women wanting to meet you", etc., that could then erase the track back link? I am not a software geek but there must be a host of them in Merrie Olde England that could whip up such a thing.

Yes, but we are busy being greedy capitalists. ;-)

Not much of an ad for the Big Blog Company, is it?

"but we are busy being greedy capitalists. ;-) "

Just like the spammers ....

The American government thinks it can enforce 'freedom' at the point of a gun all over the world; but it can't or won't stop its advertisers deluging foreign email accounts with crass and disgusting unsolicited electronic junk.

What a picture of the modern USA this spam conjures up: a land full of men worrying about the lengths of their tools and their ability to keep them up, or desperate for cheaper medicines, or gagging for rip-off software, dodgy investment tips and dirty pictures.

You'd think Emperor George would tackle the nuisance if only to salvage his nation's cyber-image of diseased impotence, so consonant with his achievements in foreign policy. But the Bush administration would rather spend the citizens' taxes on frisking little old ladies at airports and tapping your telephone without court authorisation.

Big government: vainglorious, incompetent and riddled with graft. And it was a 'free enterprise' Republican who made it more so than ever.

I think it was PdH who once likened spammers to horse thives in centuries past. Such folk were hanged for endangering the economic structure of society. I'd obviously draw the line at capital punishment, but these creeps are seriously diminishing the ability of the internet to function as a valuable communications device. How to stop it, I dunno.

Nice rant there Matt. I actually agree with you on airport security though.

Isn't there some kind of software-bot that you could use to ping the spam sites and search for keywords such as "Viagra", "hot women wanting to meet you", etc., that could then erase the track back link?

Sure, MT Blacklist... but the spammers do not make filtering that easy (they just change the key words slightly), so the only way I can stop them hitting Samizdata with about 2-300 trackbacks per day is to block the hosting domain... which is blogspot.

TypePad seems to manage rather better at keeping the spammers from using their service so I do wish blogger would do likewise.

Bored with the social individualist transhumanised metacontext thingy?

Play poker the George W Bush way on line, 24/7:

www.texasholdemwithouttrialforfouryears.com

Gitmo: Yeah, it's a crime. We should have hung them a year ago.

Editor Perry: I am using a bit of judgement when I do a round of ping deletes... some of the pings are from really good lib blogs and I hate to cut them off. - Editor Dale.

"but we are busy being greedy capitalists. ;-) "

Just like the spammers ....
- :))))

Matt O'Halloran, no, but are you bored with your antisocial racist collectivist thingy? Banned.