It seems that I inadvertently stirred up a hornet’s nest with my last entry about internet users spamming opponents and their allies. 

I noted the differences between various commenters - some were James Bond (cool, calm & collected btw-isn’t Daniel Craig one of the best Bonds ever) while others were more Basil Fawlty (blustering and loud). I did get some responses that were relevant to my original post though.

After various comments had been made I asked

Any chance we could get back to the topic I started?
Do any of you think it’s ethical to attack your opponents in such a way as to probably affect the innocent bystanders???

I got some replies…

@ Sharon: No, not at all. (aprivateman)

I think it is highly unethical to drag innocents into it by posting obfuscated links to pornography on a publicly viewable forum…(aprivateman)

As for Sharon’s question, I’m than happy to answer it, no I don’t think that the debate is served by resorting to petty and personal insults. I wish people would engage more with the technology…(Aphormation)

It’s been reported recently that the owners of the Pirate Bay are supposedly asking supporters to carry out a ‘DDo$’ on those they have to pay money to after their court case. This I find utterly childish. I feel personally that the ruling they receive, while ethically & morally possibly deserved, was legally a little suspect. However, that is no reason to attempt to cause problems for a business. That business employs regular people with mortgages, families etc who may find their jobs at risk if this ‘prank’ gets out of hand and ends up costing the company a lot of money.

I too have been on the receiving end of spamming recently. Last night alone I received over 30 spam messages to my personal blog. This is a blog I rarely update but still I got all these attempts to promote goodness knows what kind of links. Luckily I moderate all comments so any of the handful who read it aren’t going to be affected. But it is going to cost me about 10mins of my time to make sure they’re all deleted with the contempt they deserve.

The internet does provides many wonderful services, it’s a shame it’s sometimes spoiled by childish but calculated behaviour.