I moderate every comment posted to this blog. All one of them, so far. I don’t do that to censor viewpoints with which I don’t agree (though I could). I do it to keep the spammers and other jackasses from polluting the pond here. Every once in a while I get a dozen or so bogus comments posted by lame-ass criminals trying to spread viruses, Trojan programs or porno ads. I just delete their sorry crap and go on with my life.
The Internet as we know it is under constant siege. Unfortunately most of the attacks come from outside the US, places where the local governments are unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Even more disturbing, I suspect the majority of these attacks are perpetrated by US residents, using crappy computers in crappy, backwards or unfriendly countries to avoid prosecution in the US.
The answer to this problem as it stands today is not more laws. The laws we have are easily (and universally) circumvented or ignored. The only answer I can offer up is frontier justice. In the mean time, I just play Whack-A-Mole with the spammers, thieves and other low-life scum. So far I win.