Dante and Blog Spam

If Dante were alive today, I wonder what punishments he would imagine for blog spammers. Those of you who maintain blogs undoubtedly have had to delete hundreds of comments and trackbacks for things like Viagra and Texas Hold ’em poker. Lately I’ve been seeing much more diversity in the spam comments — things like motorcycles, computers, cell phones. The purpose of these comments, of course, is to boost the spammers’ Google rankings by increasing their inbound links. Maybe I should be pleased that my site has some value as a link farm. But I’m not.

So, if I were Dante, here’s what I propose: the blog spammers will inhabit one of the lower levels of the Abyss. All of their spam comments will be printed out each morning and they will literally be forced to “eat their words.” Then, they will spend the rest of each day playing Texas Hold ’em — losing every hand — while gorging on Viagra, Cialis, and weight reduction pills until they explode. Finally, they will be forced, at the point of a pitchfork, to read out loud every blog entry they’ve ever spammed. And then they’ll do it all over again. Forever.

Since I’m not Dante, but am rather a lawyer of modest training and abilities, I’ll instead resort to the courts. Let this, then, constitute an official notice under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, and any other arguably applicable state, federal or international laws, conventions, or treaties, that this site prohibits comment spam, trackback spam, and any other form of commercial solicitation, promotion or advertising, including, but not limited to, any use of this site as a “link farm” for the purpose of boosting search engine rankings. Further, the owner of this site considers himself a third-party beneficiary of any agreement between any blog spammer and any search engine, including, but not limited to, Google, which prohibits the use of “link farms” or other similar devices to affect search rankings. By spamming this site, you agree that the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey shall have personal jurisdiction over you in any dispute arising from your spamming of this site, and you further consent to venue in such District. In addition, you agree to pay the owner of this site’s attorneys’ fees, including a reasonable fee representing the value of the owner’s time if appearing pro se, incurred as a result of any dispute between the owner and you relating to your spamming of this site.

So there. If any of my lawyer friends read this any have any suggestions for causes of action against blog spammers, or if any of my blogger friends wishes to serve as the class representative in a class action suit, let me know.