Comments on: Can Collective Action Stop Spam From Ruining The Internet? https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/can-collective-action-stop-spam-from-ruining-the-internet/2006/08/21 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 08 Sep 2014 08:35:56 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 By: James Burke https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/can-collective-action-stop-spam-from-ruining-the-internet/2006/08/21/comment-page-1#comment-2152 Mon, 21 Aug 2006 21:50:46 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=385#comment-2152 Graffiti on a wall can be beautiful or ugly. Most graffiti artists make no income from their works. Whether they pollute the physical space depends on the work they create. Simple tags on the windows of public subway trains are generally ugly although are like a primitve back channel of communication for the writers. “I was here” is the main message, like dogs pissing.

Sploggers on the other hand produce sites which often make little sense, with the intent on generating links while pitching the pin-ball machine of adSense to the left and right to tip the odds of winning. Their creators want to earn money, the profit motive ruling. They are different from graffiti artists in their speed of reaction (the medium) and like Steve Rubel has observed, ripping content from the sites of people that have invested their attention and authenticity. At the same time their final result can not be taken to be a serious insult in that they merely reproduce and add little meaningful commentary aside from commercially directed messages to feel insulted by or to respond to on any higher level of meaning. The question is whether splogs represent a violation of attention/identity rights? Noone died, but an identity was abused/reused. What is the appropriate reaction to them?
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