Yesterday, we talked a bit about Lycos Europe's (OTC BB: LYCOF.PK) new "Make Love, Not Spam" (MLNS) initiative -- a screen saver that enforces vigilante justice on spammers by responding to their junk mail with a mild form of the well-known "denial of service" attack.
As I wrote then, I think the idea is pure brilliance: Finally, Internet users have a way to strike back at the invisible fiends who have transformed the Internet into a rancid sea composed of 60% junk mail. But I also thought the program carried with it some fairly significant legal risks, in that there's always the possibility that it might accidentally retaliate against websites innocent of any wrongdoing. An attack against such an "innocent bystander," launched by Lycos Europe's product and traceable directly back to Lycos Europe, would almost certainly result in a lawsuit against Lycos Europe (Lycos Europe's parent company, Terra Networks (NASDAQ:TRLY), and its parent company, Telefonica SA (NYSE:TEF), should be insulated from liability, however).
But it seems now that the matter is not going to get that far. Apparently, the world's Internet service providers are not at all pleased to hear about Lycos Europe's plans. The ISPs fear that, because many companies share bandwidth and server space to host their websites, a retaliatory attack by Lycos Europe against a single spammer -- not even a mistaken attack against a non-spammer -- has the potential of causing "collateral damage" to innocent parties sharing the spammers' bandwidth, server space, etc.
The ISPs are therefore banding together to create so-called "black holes" to foil the MLNS program. I don't pretend to understand all the technical details of how an Internet black hole works. But the upshot appears to be that the black holes are: (1) preventing users from accessing the MLNS download site and (2) preventing MLNS from working even if it has been downloaded and installed successfully. The black holes will accomplish the latter by cutting MLNS off from its source of information about the URLs it's supposed to be counterattacking -- effectively blinding the program so that it cannot see whom it is supposed to be "shooting" at. In other words, Lycos Europe's users can install the MLNS screen saver -- but it will not actually do anything for them or anything against suspected spammers.
Oh, well. It was a nice idea for the, um, 24 hours or so that it lasted. But it appears we're still going to have to place the bulk of our faith in protecting us from spammers with the professional anti-spam sellers: the McAfees (NYSE:MFE) and Symantecs (NASDAQ:SYMC), Verisigns (NASDAQ:VRSN), and, soon, Microsofts (NASDAQ:MSFT), of the world.
Wondering whatever happened to the non-European parts of Lycos Inc.? Read about it in Lycos' Lesson for Google Investors.
Fool contributor Rich Smith owns no shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article.
