jayeff

Change in business practises, exactly like social, political and economic change, are almost always driven from the top. This is because among the ranks as it were, there are those who like things the way they are, and more importantly the majority - usually - who are too lethargic to act.

However the motivation for change comes when someone at the top perceives that there is something to be gained from it. That perception can be triggered by a sizeable minority. That is one reason this industry already has a few sponsors who do operate professionally and why some have used the opposition to Zango to score a few brownie points for themselves.

The answer to your question, tiresome as it is, is just to keep banging away, not just about scumware, but about anything which bugs you. For example, Jace has been making a fuss about RSS feeds recently. It may be that only a couple of sponsors will pay attention this time around, but if the pressure is kept up, others will follow. Eventually, producing non-working and/or ineffective feeds will be the exception and not the rule.

There is a potentially good thing about Zango, which is that if you look at the life cycle of any industry, it starts out as a wild west scenario with everyone preying on everyone else. As large operators emerge and grow more, it becomes less worth their while to prey on individuals and inevitably they start to prey on each other, as the only targets rich enough to be worth their time and effort.

That is the point at which you see widespread change and although I suspect Zango is about 5 years too soon, if not Zango, something similar will be the key. The thing about scumware is that while it affects a lot of affiliates in a very small way, its impact is greatest on other sponsors. As those who have become complacent because they have fulfilled their ambitions, are replaced at the top of the tree by hungrier newcomers, anything but legitimate competition will become increasingly less acceptable.

This is true of everything which broadly comes under the heading of "professionalism", because industries do not stand still. Those who want to rise to the top today cannot use the same methods as worked for those who are already at the top. To displace existing companies, they need to be better. Thus standards inevitably rise, no matter how much that is resisted.


Not that I'm aware of and even if you do attempt to check (by infecting a spare PC for example), you only get a snapshot of that moment in time. A week or a month later, their customers and targets will have changed.