Spam in domain names easily refers somewhat evangelically, yet not too far off, to domain name speculators who overran the system. Search for a few domain name ideas, things you want to register, for a usage besides speculation, and you’ll probably find that its taken by a speculator, not someone actually using it.

The success of any system will ensure three after markets, black, gray, and good. Its just how it works. It sucks. But that’s where the balance between free enterprise and regulation needs to step in. The libertarians say that government involvement is reprehensible, the capitalists say the market solves its own problems, and the leftists tend toward regulatory control.

Each of those fails in their own perfect world. We have to put up with the gray-market, or at least make the blockage of them a choice, try disallow the intrinsically black-market (meaning the objectively unethical), and teach the good to our kids by example =)

Interestingly, or perhaps disturbingly, the perfect network that blocks all gray markets will also block all things that the moral majority claims are gray market. Sad how soon after government abuses of all kinds people will still trust those bodies that should always be drastically controlled in the scope of their power, i.e. all branches of government and their law enforcement arms.

That’s an interesting analogy! Evolution might explain it best of all…SPAM acts as a kind of winnower…making the strain of email that survives that much stronger.

I think we’re also seeing this with social networks…those are evolving rapidly to survive. The Facebook riots over the news feed (with resulting interface changes), for example, is evidence of evolution for survival. Good technology is surviving, in some cases, while the people kill off the bad ones.

It’s all about convenience, or “context and usability” as you’ve said. As long as we’re able to successfully and accurately fight off spam with algorithms, email will remain a very convenient method of communication, and we won’t switch.