Just passed through Blogspotting and noticed a Stephen Baker entry (Link) which had a comment in it I thought was worth sharing since I’ve raised the issue of virtual “griefing” on several occasions (most notably this one – Link). His blog entry concerns the trials and tribulations of the now very well known “Million Dollar Homepage” entrepeneur, Alex Tew. As most people are now probably aware, the newly-minted millionaire is apparently becoming the target of denial-of-service attacks originating from Russian extortionists (i.e. they’ve infected the computers of average people worldwide and are turning them into “zombies” which repeatedly attempt to access the target website, thus overwhelming it and basically causing it to shut down). That’s a problem considering his obligations to those who purchased ad space on his website and made him wealthy. Here’s what Mr. Baker had to say:

The lesson? Success draws outlaws, who in the world of the net are just a click or two away. In retrospect, sometime between hatching the idea and gaining monster publicity for it, Alex should have secured the site, arranged for massive bandwidth, and hired a lawyer. Next time he probably will.

I’m not sure there’ll be a next time for Alex, but that’s good advice for whoever does have the next million-dollar idea.