Web Sites Shut Down In Spam Fight

from the over-aggressive-spam-fighting dept

Well, here's an interesting story. It appears that the spam company that was profiled in last week's NY Times, which resulted in Techdirt being threatened with a bogus lawsuit have been taken offline by their ISP. The company in question claims they're not spammers, but many people seem to disagree. While I do think it's a good thing to take spammers offline, it sounds like this is yet another case of the anti-spam posse going too far. Not only did they force the one "email marketing" company offline, but also any other site hosted by the same company. Now, here's where I'm a bit confused. The article seems to blame SPEWS for the problem - and I agree that SPEWS is sometimes a bit to aggressive without any care concerning collateral damage. However, the real problem here seems to be the facility that manages the hosting company's servers - since they're the ones who shut down all of the company's machines due to complaints about a single spammer. I have no issue with people who are spamming being taken offline (the faster, the better). However, taking others with them is going too far. My question is why did the hosting facility need to take down all of the sites, instead of just forcing the company to cancel the account of the spammers?

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