So I turn the comments back on for about two minutes, and already there are a bunch of spam comments from the pig enthusiasts mentioned below. Like all websites with comments facilities, I’ve been the victim of comment spam before: but never with this kind of volume.

I suppose I was hoping that their comment spammer would time out on my URLs after enough failures: but apparently I misunderestimated the dedication of these people who would advertise poker hyphen critic dot com.

The policies of this website, which are linked from the bottom of every page, clearly specify that unauthorized advertising via the comments or trackback facilities of this website cost not less than $1,000 per insertion, and I believe that this is actually enforceable. The trouble is, to enforce this you need to find the people responsible, and then drag them into a U.S. court.

And then you have to establish that the people whose product is being advertised are actually responsible for the advertisements. It would be pretty easy to claim that these spams were the work of your enemies, out to destroy your reputation. Since these comments are coming from all over the place (presumably a network of zombie PCs), it’s difficult or impossible to trace them back to anyone directly.

Anyway, I’ve updated the anti-comment-spam software, and we’ll see whether that helps. Mentioning ‘poker’ in any context at all will now also cause a comment to be rejected. If you must talk about poker, please use a term like ‘five-card stud’ (though terms like that may soon also be banned here if things go on like this) or ‘thingie you use to move logs around in the fireplace’.

Now I’ve got to get back to working my ass off on things that actually bring in money.