Ah gotcha, I guess that's pretty much all google can do. They also unfortunately validate it as a tactic against people/small companies that wouldn't otherwise realize: 1. They have a bunch of spammy links pointing to them, 2. That the links are negatively affecting them, and 3. They can do something about it.
Maybe it would be nice of them to email webmasters to notify them that they're being punished by spammy links, but I guess this would defeat the point of punishing it in the first place (as opposed to just not counting them towards the page rank).
They actually do send an email alert. I didn't find an authoritative blog post on the subject, but here's a post from a reputable SEO site discussing these email alerts:
Maybe it would be nice of them to email webmasters to notify them that they're being punished by spammy links, but I guess this would defeat the point of punishing it in the first place (as opposed to just not counting them towards the page rank).