This week saw Myspace win a huge victory against junk mail in the form of a record £120m legal judgement against two spammers. Their press sources are claiming this represents the beginning of a serious spam crackdown. For many however, the question remains; is this genuinely likely prove an effective example in curtailing spam, or simply turn out to be yet another high-profile waste of time?
Parallels with the record industry's efforts to discourage illegal downloading with much-publicised lawsuits come to mind. Despite generating quite a few short term headlines, the lawsuits rarely achieved their purpose of scaring downloaders into paying or abstaining. The odds of getting caught were simply far too remote to warrant desisting.
In the case of Myspace spammers I feel it is all too likely the same will prove true. The case mentioned above may have seen Myspace win a record sum - but it is unlikely to ever re-coup any of this money (the two spammers didn't even appear in court; in all likelihood they might not ever be tracked down by the law). Myspace of course was not in it for the money - though the size of the sum will certainly help the cause of grabbing column headlines, which was surely the real objective of the exercise.
Myspace does however have one advantage over the record industry in the legal arena and it is that, unlike in the case of the music labels, they are prosecuting people whom they have nothing to lose by alienating. The record industry meanwhile must consider the fact that those being sued are also often their best customers on whom they otherwise rely.
The folks at Myspace are far too familiar with the extent of the problem to be so naive as to think they have solved it. The maths of prosecuting offenders means that it will never represent a totally effective deterrent in this sense. What might work though is a tightening of the system itself, so that spammers find the going a little less profitable and straightforward.
Much has already been done in this area, including the introduction of security verification codes into the message sending process (they are currently non-mandatory). The messaging service is now much healthier looking since this move, though the codes are not without their drawbacks; they can be quite annoying when trying to send multiple messages quickly - but all in all the trade-off is worth it. Unfortunately the problem has now simply moved to comments boards, on which most spam is now posted.
Myspace could make all comments require user pre-approval, or introduce mandatory security codes. But in the end this would only re-configure the problem. A certain level of spam is the price we pay for the openness and ease-of use inherent to services like Myspace. Shifting the balance too far towards the security end would make the service far less appealing (though spam free), and Myspace knows this.
Perhaps that is why the legal avenues seem like the only reasonable alternative. Deep down the whole thing is largely a PR exercise - Myspace is at least (if only) appearing to take the fight to the spammers - and both they and the spammers know it. Myspace will continue to send its message, but I doubt they seriously believe the spam gang will take much notice - It looks like we'll have to get used to junk mail being around for a good while yet...
Dejan Levi
