Everyone who downloaded that screensaver did so intentionally, this wasn't a trojan operating behind the scenes. The participants were willing combatants, the engine happened to come from Lycos this time, but there have been other efforts in the past as well.
And if the spammers don't like my packets being sent to their system, all they have to do is send me a polite e-mail asking to be removed. It is really quite simple.
You really think generating *terabytes* of junk traffic is a good way to solve problems?
(I'm purposefully ignoring the fact that this already happens in some circles. My point is that DDoS would be more widely used.)
And the argument that these people "deserved" the DDoS they got is partially flawed, too. For example, one of the sites targeted (http://www.artofsense.com/) appears to have been an accidental casualty - an affiliate sent spam with images from their site.
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