Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Come up with a better alternative, because I assure you, you will hate weeding through the 1000 get rich quick offers and Rolex copy adds and warez site links to find the next real message in a thread even more.
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How about, "prosecute the ones who distribute spam, the same way they go after those who distribute torrent links, for interfering with business and violating TOUs" -- and tying up phone lines; spam is actionable under the same laws that cover malicious faxing.
Extend the CAN-SPAM act to blog comments, and start enforcing it.
The problem isn't "there's no way to stop spam comments other than Captcha or similar;" it's that the legislature has refused to acknowledge that this is a serious business problem that should be addressed through legal means (or at least, have the option of being so addressed) rather than leaving it to individual webhosts to find creative coding ways to fix a problem that wouldn't exist if the current laws were properly enforced--except that large corporations aren't lobbying the government to crack down on spam; they like that small companies have to spend substantial portions of their IT budgets fighting it.
(If the feds can afford to send six armed officers to the homes of people
searching for "pressure cooker' and "backpack", they can afford to track down some of those "This was a helpful post now visit my car site!!!" blog comments.)