Sorry, guy, but this is one of those areas where no amount of getting tough on crime will solve the problem.

Spam is just a symptom of a very badly broken technology, one which simply provides no means to control spam, or indeed, control anything at all. It's a bit like everyone having defective locks on their doors--that's no excuse for burglary, but yet human nature dictates that a certain percentage of people will exploit the broken locks to break and enter. Add to that the ability of the burglars to clone themselves infinitely, and you can be sure that everyone will get robbed, many times a day, forever and ever, ahshit.

It can't be fixed, either. "Email 1.0" is so badly broken that it would have to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. I can't see the world suspending message-based communication for a few weeks while the new software is installed and debugged and tuned, on millions of mail servers around the Net.

"Somebody" needs to invent "email 2.0" along completely new lines. I wonder if anybody's working on that right now, as we speak? ;-)