Toms View of the World

Now, it’s been reported by Aunty Spam’s Net Patrol that Lycos have pulled the now infamous screensaver.

It’s also been reported by Netcraft that several of the internet backbone providers have blacklisted it!

Anyway, my thoughts, yes, it was probably illegal, yes, blacklisting it was the right thing for the providers to do, and yes, spam is a curse and a pain in the neck…

As I’ve said before, I’m not "pro-spam" in any way, but Lycos approach to this was simply stooping to the level of spammers, virus writers and the like. By making it appear "ligitimate" and allowing people to choose to download it - it makes the individual directly responsible for taking part in a worldwide Distributed Denial of Service attack - unlike a virus based Trojan which "sneaks" onto your system by either exploiting a vulnerability or by pretending to be something else - the people who used this screensaver knew exactly what they were doing, and could be easily held accountable should the authorities in their country decide that such action is illegal…

Final Update (07/12/04)
According to the BBC, Lycos have scrapped the screensaver [@more@]