Scummy companies can generally avoid the law, look at Sharman Networks/KaZaA. Thats a company publishing a blatently illegal product, but they've managed to twart some of the most rabid laywers in the business.

It will take "sender pays", either in time and effort to authenticate (CAPTCHAs (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/captcha.pdf) and similar response-mechanisms) or in money. Even at $.01/email (payable to the recipient), most Spam will be uneconomical and cease to exist.

But without sender-pays, spam will probably exist.


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