Mark and fellow JDs clearly have let their prosecutorial histories cloud their perception of this matter. The truth is that Lycos Europe proposed the most novel approach yet to stopping spam, and it had nothing to do with a denial of service attack. As clearly stated by Lycos, a DoS attack would be counterproductive to their end goal, which was to RAISE THE SPAMMERS' HOSTING BILLS. Taking down the servers was never their intent, and they made great efforts to avoid doing so.
Mark and all: So far, the "problem" that permits spam to continue is that the practice of spamming is essentially a nearly zero-cost, zero-loss advertising practice to the sender. Unscrupulous vendors will gladly use any medium available to them (ethical, legal, or NOT) so long as they generate any profits. Lycos attempted to change this financial equation. By raising the bills of verified spamming servers, hoping it would discourage future activity by finally providing consequences to the spam sender. Is there a way to take advantage of such a system by "spoofing" spam and advertising an innocent third-party...certainly Yes. Likely...not. Is Lycos to be criticized or congratulated?
Well, congratulations Lycos for trying to fix the situation. Sadly, the legal and academic world would propose rather: Let's sit around and continue to do nothing effective about spam instead, while our legislators draft additional ineffective laws that--even when critical of spam and not supportive of media groups like the DMA--cannot be conceivably be enforced across Internet borders anyhow.

Solution, this is not a legal issue; change the financial equation or spam will never go away.

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