IMHO, E-mail spam now overwhelms the entire Internet E-mail system. I consider spam as destructive of what would otherwise be a very practical and conventient system. Hence, I believe that spam should be a criminal offense and punished very severely.

Furthermore, this punishment should extend to those who pay the spammers. If you look into your spam, there is usually a URL to some commercial interest. That interest should pay the penatly jointly with their spamming agent. This prevents the spamming agent from vanishing. A commercial interest is a target that can often be found.

The penalty: For each spam message transmitted (regardless of whether it actually finds a recipient, it still clogs the Internet), the culprits should pay a fine of $10. Messages sent to multiple recipients should be result in fines of $10 per recipient. That does not sound like much, but it is actually huge. The typical spammer sends out millions of spams each week. This would result in fines of tens of millions of dollars per week, which would take the profit out of spamming.

For example, here is a typical spam message that I just received which was not even addressed to me:

Better Future, wind-parted
Standard HeaderHide Pane
Abraham Mendoza <AbrahamMendoza@1-internet-courses.com>
Monday, July 31, 2006 11:19:56 AM
To:davidforer@ameritech.net

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and want IMMEDIATEO cash to spend ANY way you like, or simply wish
to LOWER your monthly paym ents by a third or more, here are the dea ls
we have TODAY (hurry, these ofers will expre TONIGHT):

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Hurry, when these deals are gone, they are gone Simply fill out this one-min ute form...

Don't worry about approval, your cre dit will not disqualify you!

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it, that he wanted to go up to it, to touch it, pat it, and suddenly the
his glass and said: "Well, I guess we're off?" Noonan looked over at the old

it, and named the locations of abandoned cottages that were being sold for a
direction of the bundle of rags on the stony hillside.
people. It seems the Visitation caught them here, and they mutated ....

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obviously was incapable of floating up and dancing in the air, the way so
heaps surrounded them, and that mountains hid in the gloom beyond. And he
emigration, be turned down, and sue for compensation, which would pay for

face, or voice, or soul. Buzzard had a hoarse, whiny, sneaky kind of voice.
throat, and he realized that they had to hurry and get out from under the