I was talking with a good friend of mine last night and he made comment about how the only way that spam will disappear is when the lawmakers get more spam than they can handle themselves that they make it illegal.
While I see his point, the fact that the Internet is a global network makes legislation impractical to solve such a large problem. In fact I would think it would have about as much success as the war on drugs.
Innovation is the correct direction to move in to resolve the issues at hand. Finding the flaws and fixing them as well as sincere blocking of messages and servers that are not keeping with the times.
Technologies like SPF and bayesian filters will make more of a difference on a global scale than any legislation that comes out of any single country.
The bottleneck is not currently technology, it is the implementation of technology. If more companies would implement SPF in their DNS records alone, not even adding an SPF component to their incoming email server, spam and viruses would be reduced.
This is not a battle to completely obliterate the enemy, this is a game that we need only play to a stalemate. Our email systems are in place for a reason; to communicate with others. Spammers are in business because they exploit our desire to communicate with others.
Reduce a spammer’s ability to communicate with the email users on your email server and you have effected his bottom line. Accomplish this without impacting your users ability to communicate with the people they want to communicate with and your users will be happy.