So damn funny. Two seemingly-naive web programmers decided to write an application that runs around visiting people’s websites, ostensibly in an effort to look for broken links and email the webmaster to let him know about the problems. As a prelude to their service, they sent their application along on a spidering trip, which they said was targeted toward gathering webmaster email addresses which they could then use for their service; as a little bonus, the application left behind a referrer entry pointing back to a thread on their discussion board which explained what they were doing. And when webmasters came calling — in droves — with objections to the referrer spam (and to the fact that the application ignored the robot exclusion files on websites it visited), the two clueless souls stood unrepentant, with the results you’d expect.

It appears that Darwin is alive and well on the Internet!