Worldwide efforts to put in place legislation aimed at cracking down on spam are yet to bear fruit, but the new laws may have a gradual effect.
| "Big governments are dying to prosecute these guys because they're a pain in the neck... they're really causing trouble." |
"Everything I have read suggests that a very small number of people are responsible for a very large chunk of spam," he says. "Law enforcement should crack down on them. A couple months of work to nail the top 10 would send a huge message."
Australia's Spam Act became law earlier this year amid a storm of criticism. The naysayers called the legislation weak -- it would never have an affect on the booming business of spam. However, a few serious victories could see spammers getting scared off, according to Mason.
"The laws that have been brought in will make a huge difference. There are a few bottom feeders who send out little bits... but there's a surprisingly small number of guys sending out huge volumes of spam," he says. "Big governments are dying to prosecute these guys because they're a pain in the neck... they're really causing trouble."
A couple of convictions could stifle spamming efforts and push spamming to the outer fringes of the Internet; the practice would be pushed well underground, limiting its appeal. "I think if they start managing to prosecute some of the big guys it will go down... but I don't think it will ever disappear."
Martin agrees. "They would have to bust them, put them out of business and drag them through the court system. Make it unprofitable and make it very public," he says.
A lesson from Instant Messenger?
Instant messenger software proved that new Internet applications are on the way. Many companies use IM for communicating both internally and sometimes externally and between sites. It's a fast, efficient mode of communication. With one key difference to e-mail: sending unsolicited messages is much more difficult.
Even consumer instant messenger applications -- such as ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, and MSN -- rely heavily on contact lists. No one can send you an instant message unless you've allowed them to do so. Could such a model work with e-mail? Yahoo's Watt -- who claims spam is the number one complaint from Yahoo users -- says it's not likely. People will use instant messenger, but perhaps for different applications to e-mail, she says.
"As we see better infrastructure, videoconferencing will probably be a no brainer," Watt says. "People want to have that kind of communication ability."
Microsoft's Cunningham also says an IM model is unlikely to take hold in the e-mail space. Its anyone-to-anyone nature is what makes it attractive.
"The mentality in the two is very different. One of the benefits of e-mail is you can send to anyone you want to," he says.
Instead of engineering Exchange products to operate like IM clients, Microsoft is planning to tightly mesh its Messenger product with Outlook.
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