Techdirt weighs in on the plan by six leading ISPs to shut off Internet access to “zombie” computers:
While it’s good to see them (finally) taking this issue seriously, one of the proposed solutions is to limit how many emails a customer can send out per hour or per day. While this is unlikely to be a problem for most users, it could cause problems for people who legitimately need to send out a large number of messages.
Besides, as some have been suggesting, all this really means is that spammers will have incentive to get their software on even more machines in order to keep on spamming.
I was nodding in agreement until I got to that last part. Is he saying that spammers will do more damage if they’re impeded at major arteries of the Internet? That’s absurd. Spammers already have an incentive to take over as many computers as possible. I can’t imagine that Spam Inc. has decided that they have enough zombies already, thanks very much.
Making the life of a spammer more difficult is noble work. If the folks who run the most populated chunks of the Internet can starve some of these vermin, more power to them.