Fiddling While Rome Burns (one more time)

For years I have railed about the inadequate industry cooperation when it came to the mitigation of spam (or failure to do so). I know that it's not a simple issue. The industry participants are nearly as callus or evil as the outcome might suggest. Solving the problems requires creating the right economic (carrot or stick) for the parties that have to do the work and that's not necessarily easy. For example, many ISP's have technology in house by which they could mitigate BotNet activity if informed which IP number are Bot's. But doing so would only increase the customer support costs for the ISP so they aren't motivated to do so since they already have trouble making any money. On the other hand, if we don't solve the problem the future looks very scary (the present is scary enough) as this NTY story about Russian organized crime suggests. Still feels like Fiddlin' if you ask me!