Tough Crowd (Russian Anti-Spam Edition)

Russian-language media, both online and offline, has made little effort to conceal one central thought when dealing with the spammer's demise: that somehow the late [Vardan] Kushnir got what he deserved. "The Spammer Had it Coming," one headline reads. "Spam is Deadly," "Ignoble Death Becomes Russia's Top Spammer," "An Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem"–84 Russian-language news captions on Kushnir's murder, retrieved by the Yandex News search engine within a day of the event, seem to share the general feeling.

That's an article about the brutal murder of Russia's leading spammer, "the most hated person among 17.6 million Internet users in Russia, whom he continuously spammed over the last few years, sending out tons of email ads for his language courses."

Whole thing here.

Tip of pixel to Ben Schwartz, co-author (with Terry Colon) of the most withering mockery of Dick Cheney of all time. Read it here.

Back in 2003 (god, that seems like years ago), Reason offered up its own solution to spam–one that stopped well short of murder–here.