A Modest Propsal for Spam.

Here's my idea for fighting spam emails. It is ultimately a banking regulation, not an internet protocol regulation. My hunch is that the credit card companies and the online payment services (PayPal, etc.) are as much a part of the crime culture here as are the hackers operating the spam houses themselves. The electronic transaction companies have got to be profiting from the business behind spam as are the vieaggra pushers themselves. Here's how it goes:

FBI agents would set up email addresses and go about a "normal" life of interacting in the internet using that email address. As this email address gets about, spammers would inevitably get ahold of the address and start sending spam solicitations to it.

Here's the trick. The agents would then be authorized to attempt to purchase items from the website using whatever electronic payment method that the spamming business offered. If the transaction goes through, then instead of a $X charge against the purchaser's account, there would instead be a $100 fine automatically charged against the account of the spammer. Any items actually delivered become state's evidence for any court cases that may arise. If it's just a URL, then the agent goes to the site and orders anything at will off the site.

Here's the net: a condition of doing business in the United States in the realm of any electronic payments is that you have to agree to cooperate with such a penalty system. In this scenario, spammers who take checks would be left alone.