Vigilantism worked so much better in the 19th century.
Last Wednesday, the European rump of what was once Lycos, Inc. -- now called Lycos Europe (Pink Sheets: LYCOF.PK) -- tried to bring vigilantism into the 21st century. The company offered Internet users the ability to join forces to launch something resembling a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on websites advertised in spam emails. All a user had to do was download the company's "Make Love, Not Spam" (MLNS) screensaver, and whenever the user's computer was inactive, it could participate in the worldwide vigilante movement.
But first, users had to be able to access the download site -- and that became a problem. For, as popular as the program was becoming with the spam-hating masses, and as ballyhooed as it was by Lycos Europe itself, MLNS did not exactly elicit rave reviews from the world's Internet service providers (ISPs). Of course, given the risks that the program might lash out at innocent targets, or inflict "collateral damage" on innocent companies that shared bandwidth or server space with honest to goodness spam-meisters, the ISPs' concerns were probably justified.
Justified or not, the ISPs responded to Lycos Europe's vigilantism with a little Wild West justice of their own -- setting up Internet "black holes" to cut off MLNS's website so that would-be downloaders couldn't access it, and so that even if downloaded, the program couldn't operate effectively. Reports suggest that this was no two-bit rebellion either -- that companies as major as MCI (NASDAQ:MCIP) and Global Crossing (NASDAQ:GLBC) participated in setting up the black holes. In response, Lycos Europe announced on Friday that due to incredible demand for MLNS, it was going to have to pull the download site temporarily to deal with "hosting and management issues," but that it would be back up soon.
Apparently not, for yesterday, Lycos Europe finally admitted defeat. Arguing that MLNS had created "spam awareness" and thus was already a success, and declaiming loudly against the naysayers who had out-vigilanted its own vigilantism, the company pulled the site for good.
For all that Lycos Europe is putting on a brave face -- "declaring victory and going home" as it were -- this still looks like a defeat for the company. Because when MLNS was shut down, so too was a potential revenue stream shut off. MLNS was written in such a manner as to enable it to display advertisements on users' screens while they "fought spam" and, while the company never came out and said this was part of its business model, it almost certainly was. But no more.
To read the rest of this short-lived story, click through to:
Fool contributor Rich Smithowns no shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article.
