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…