Leader: Has Lycos empowered the spammers?

Even in the fleeting and transitory world of technology, Lycos' spam-busting screensaver was the most short-lived of initiatives.

Launched to a fanfare of mixed reaction last week, it has now closed. The plan was to unite users against spam and use the power of their idle machines to attack spammers' websites.

The company today issued a statement: "With this campaign we intended to raise a new impulse in the anti-spam discussion and therefore create awareness for the big economic and societal problems caused by spam. The campaign has reached its goal and thus will be stopped."

So it was all just a publicity stunt then, an attempt to get us thinking?

It seems an unconvincing argument. Thinking along those lines the cynical could draw the logical conclusion that the only beneficiary of all this publicity was Lycos. Other cynics may suggest the company has now walked away from a war it soon realised it was ill-equipped to wage.

It would be more convincing if the company was to say 'it seemed like a good idea at the time'.

And to many it did. Nearly 100,000 people signed up for the screensaver, showing a huge support for extreme action against spammers - or at least a return to the good, old-fashioned, values of the angry mob.

But even those supporters, such as Steve Linford at SpamHaus, who has done more to raise the profile of spam and more to combat those who send it than most, said coming down to the level of the spammer was never going to be the right tactic.

"You can't break into a thief's house just because he breaks into yours," said Linford.

A case of 'back to the drawing board' for Lycos, then.

But sadly the damage may already be done and the long term repercussions could be felt for some time yet by all of us. The problem with such hastily launched initiatives - both online and offline - is the message they send out when they fail.

Each storm the spammers ride out will convince them further that they are untouchable - a Teflon tech menace. Each encouragement of this kind will likely see them raise their game.

Many within the spamming community will have been aware of what Lycos was doing.

All will be aware that it failed.