Blue Security and the drug dealer

Submitted by Mike Rothman on Wed, 2006-05-17 14:54.
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Sometimes I can't understand human nature. Two weeks ago, people (especially TypePad bloggers) were cursing Blue Security. Those morons! How could they have been so stupid to take down all of Six Apart? My blog was down for 9 hours, damn them to hell!

Well, now they are gone and people are sad. It kind of feels like a funeral for a real scumbag. High profile bloggers like Techdirt, Dan Gillmor, even my pal Martin McKeay gave similar eulogies - "Well they sucked, but we're sad to see them go." Give me a break. This sentiment just doesn't resonate with me. Though if they have free beer at the wake, I'm in!

To clarify my point, let's draw an analogy to one of my favorite topics - drug dealers. Does anyone care if one drug dealer kills another? Maybe the guy's family, but other than that - probably not. Blue Security's model was to try to take down the drug dealers by giving them more drugs. Didn't think of it that way did you?

Two wrongs don't make a right. My Mom taught me that one pretty early on. Blue Security was spamming the spammers and even if they were successful in taking down a few, 10 others would pop up in their wake.  Just like drug dealers. Take down one and 10 others fight over the vacated street corner.

So what's the answer to stopping spam? The sad truth is that to have ANY impact on the amount of spam out there we need to address the root cause of the issue - the economic incentive to spam. As long as people buy stuff from those unsolicited messages, spam will happen. IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT. Vigilantes (like the late Blue Security) are not going to repeal the laws of economics.

Getting back to my drug analogy, Nancy Reagan was right. Just say no! But as long as some folks say yes, we are fighting a losing battle. Blue Security's model was wrong from the start, so them going away was their inevitable end game. Don't kid yourself. Sure the spammers accelerated their demise, but at least it gave them an opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory.

Wrong.
Submitted by Spy der Mann (not verified) on Wed, 2006-05-17 16:45.
Blue's Security model was WORKING. It's not a drug dealer killing another. It's about a citizen arresting drug dealers. Blue Security does NOT SPAM. They just ask the spammers to stop, and keep asking them until they do. The problem with Blue Security wasn't that they "fought fire with fire", but they "fought fire with fire while in a haystack". They were centralized and thus it was easy for spammers to shut them down. A decentralized (p2p) approach, like the one we're starting to work on (see my journal), would work alright.
If it was working, why haven't spam numbers come down?
Submitted by Mike Rothman on Wed, 2006-05-17 16:56.
I totally disagree with this. The answer to stopping spammers is not to build another zombie network (even if they aren't zombies) that attacks the spammers. This is like saying although Napster was wrong (that had a centralized model), Kazaa was right because it was distributed. They were both wrong because they broke the law. I'll stand by my position that spamming the spammers is not a solution. It just escalates the battle and consume more resources, bandwidth, etc to no productive end.
I think you misread our post
Submitted by Mike Masnick (not verified) on Thu, 2006-05-18 05:15.
The point of the post on Techdirt wasn't that they sucked but it's sad to see them gone. The point was that it's bad that spammers got such an obvious win, because it will only embolden them to attack others who try to stop spam. There's a big difference. I wouldn't have had any problem if Blue Security had gone away because it wasn't working or because of some other issue. But to have them taken out in such a high profile way that will encourage spammers... that's what's sad.
I'm saddened that the spammers won
Submitted by Martin McKeay (not verified) on Thu, 2006-05-18 09:41.
Like Mike at Techdirt in the previous comment, I'm saddened that the spammers have won the battle, not that an obviously bad anti-spam solution is gone. I feel for the people who worked for Blue Security, many of whom are probably now unemployed. On the other hand, I'm sure Blue Security (who gives their company the initials BS anyways?) will probably just reorganize and come up with some other form of security product, but it's going to be a painful couple of months for a lot of their engineers and other employees.

I think your analogy of a drug dealer is a bit weak, by the way. Blue Security was more like the leader of a mob that wanted to lynch the local drug dealer. Mobs are notoriously hard to control and direct, and even if Blue Security's technology had worked for while, I'm almost certain the spammers would have found a way to turn Blue Security against legitimate mass mailing lists. Like any vigilante, BS would have taken out an innocent bystander sooner or later.

Oh well, I'm sure we can have this whole conversation again in a year or two when some other company comes up with a similar idea. Or maybe this 'Black Frog' project will give us a chance to rehash the subject even sooner. "Those who don't learn from the lessons of history are bound to repeat the mistakes" or something like that.
Of course the spammers won
Submitted by Mike Rothman on Thu, 2006-05-18 10:14.

We can be sad the spammers won, but we shouldn't be surprised. Just like the large drug cartels continue to "win" despite the great effort of many hardworking, diligent folks. As long as there is demand, folks will find a way to get the "product" to the customers. So everyone may not like the drug dealer analogy and maybe Martin is right that it's more of a vigilante lynch mob, that's not really the point.

And yes, I feel for all of the folks that have had their jobs perhaps meet with an untimely demise, but this is life in the big city and this stuff happens all the time. That's the risk of working with a start-up with an unproven business model.

But we can debate techniques to deter the spammers all we want, the reality remains - as long as they keep selling stuff - they will continue to send spam.

 

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