How about simply holding companies absolutely responsible for the methods used to distribute their advertising? Couldn't Truth In Advertising be extended to email solicitation? The one thing that *all* UCE has in common is the attempt to sell something, and that requires an identifiable business presence. After all, people can't buy from a company if the company doesn't provide *some* method of contact to accept orders.
Nearly all the spam I ever see (when cleaning out my "probably spam" folders to make sure I'm not losing real correspondence) is transparently fraudulent, advertising illegal or stolen products, from forged or hijacked sender addresses, etc. The fact that the spammers are violating laws right now, but prosecutors can't be troubled to do anything about it, makes me deeply skeptical that passing an antispam law would change that much.
And when you think about it, spending a lot of police resources to go after spammers probably wouldn't make much sense, at least beyond shutting down really large organizations. It's the same problem as fighting the war on drugs or the war on music piracy, or trying to deal with your kitchen ant infestation by mashing each ant you see with your fingers.
This is aside from the first amendment problems (it's commercial speech, so it may be possible to get around those problems, but who really knows?) with antispam laws.
--John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259
