I hope that Lycos will, at some point, resurrect its “Make Love, Not Spam” campaign in one form or another. Now that Lycos has retracted the initiative to battle spammers with DDoS attacks, the wisdom of folks such as my colleague Cathleen Moore in a recent blog post and noted security expert Bruce Schneier, among others, can be paraphrased as ‘You can’t just throw an egg at your neighbor’s house simply because their 12-year old son threw one at yours.’ I think I understand: That would create anarchy under which the government has no control over how it punishes acts that it has labeled as crime. Oh wait…I just described the current spam situation today, The CAN-SPAM Act inclusive. Anarchy. The truth is that spam is still thriving and for proof one need look no further than the nearest e-mail inbox. Granted, an eye for an eye is antiquated retribution, as well it should be. But an important realization to manifest from the event of approximately 100,000 volunteers signing up for Lycos screensaver is that plenty of computing citizens are willing to band together and duke it out with spammers, so there is some hope. And what I hope is that Lycos does not abandon its anti-spam plans but, instead, tries to figure out a way that appeals morally to the general population to resurrect the “Make Love, Not Spam” effort and declare war on spammers, even if that requires a different approach than the screensaver DDoS attack. Technology Industry