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.