Australia's minister for information technology Senator Richard Alston acknowledged that spam has become a threat to the stability of Internet services in a progress report on the National Office for the Information Economy's (NOIE) investigation into bulk unsolicited e-mail.
"Some spamming operations appear to be overloading or temporarily closing overwhelmed servers and networks of innocent intermediaries. Ultimately this has implications for the stability of Internet services, especially if spam campaigns are deliberately used to deliver viruses," Alston said.
"Spam is spreading beyond e-mail to other forms of electronic messaging, such as relay chat and instant messaging," he said.
NOIE is currently consulting with interested parties from community and industry to assess the effectiveness of measures to counter spam.
According to Senator Alston, the inquiry has attracted strong response from the public and private industry.
Solutions currently on the table for consideration include education campaigns, self-regulatory practices and codes for ISPs and commercial associations. The review may result in regulatory changes specifically targeting spam.
In February, when Senator Alston first announced the NOIE investigation, he drew strong criticism from shadow parliamentary secretary for consumer affairs, Alan Griffin. Griffin said that the government was simply recognising that measures it had taken to combat in the past have proved ineffective.
The results of the NOIE's review are expected mid-2002. In the meantime the Federal Government has extended the deadline to respond to NOIE's Web-based, spam questionnaire to April 19.
A few high profile court cases prosecuting known spammers; seeking payment for stolen services would serve to deter many "home spammers". (Not an original thought)
http://mail-abuse.org/ RealTime Black Hole List is another good idea. This "subscribes" your mail server to a know list of likely spam origins and declines mail from anyone on this list.
My favourite is www.spamradio.com - someone has gone to a lot of effort to put spam to music and broadcast real time. ?Finaly a use for spam?