Honestly I didn't know this rule. For this very case of phishing scamming, I followed the update and see that account still spreading scamming replies. I agree with you in this case.

But it might do more harm than good. We've seen so many flag wars on Steemit, although myself never got incolved in any of those. Removing the SP protection might make it too easy for those who just buy SP to downvote.

Rep itself doesn't fully do justice whether there're more likely to have scammers of low level than of high level. But removing it might make it too easy for scammers as well. 65+ rep users got stolen by a scammer is still a rare case.

My suggestion would be to find a better rep calculation method. BTW, see you at SteemFest.