Global Spam Laws Needed... But Not The US's Laws

from the so-they-say dept

As the battle against spam continues, folks in the UK are saying that local spam laws won't be enough, and that global spam laws are necessary to have a real impact. Since so much spam is "offshore" anyway, people have always said that any local spam law is likely to be almost entirely unenforceable. Of course, others point out that the current stack of US bills on preventing spam certainly should not be the model for any global spam legislation since they do more to legitimize spam than to prevent it. Of course, it's unlikely that even a global spam law (which would be nearly impossible to get passed everywhere in the world anyway) would have an impact. Spammers would just come up with loopholes - such as telling you they had a prior business relationship with you because they spammed you before - and continue their efforts. Since they would run it through offshore machines, no matter what the law says, they'd still be difficult to track down. In the end, there needs to be an economic solution to stopping spam. It needs to become so difficult and so unprofitable that no one bothers spamming any more.