This IP blocking sounds like shooting the messenger. Don't let anyone in who arrived by bus, because 8 months ago there was some drunk party arriving by bus and one of them threw up in the lobby.

Not only does it look childish, it is also against everything I always assumed anyone standing for freedom should stand for. Free software is just a tiny subset of the freedom movement. On top of that, it penalizes friendly visitors who just happen to arrive by the same route. You cannot always choose your IP, most of the time it is dynamically allocated to you by your ISP. Every public ISP has been subject to a spam attack at some point, including mine. Using the same logic as xes is advocating, I have been denied access to other services because of that. Not only do I find it infuriating, I also find it a sign of incompetence on the side of said service's sysops.

I think it's time to step back and ask, what is it exactly that we are trying to protect against? Only once we have a solid answer to that should come the next question, what is the best way to protect us against that? Instead, we have a hammer and treat everything as if it were a nail.