Anti-Spam Law Needs Spammer's Heads On Pikes

I wrote the following to Dave Farber about a comment he made:

From: Seth Finkelstein
Subject: Re: [IP] So much for anti-spam laws

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 05:05:33PM -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
> In 24 hours I have gotten 686 spam messages . That is up from pre 2004.

There won't be any change until some spammer's heads (or other organs) are nailed to the wall (metaphorically, under this law, I mean, I think ...).

Same as with the RIAA lawsuits, actually. A few high-profile high-penalty prosecutions, which hurt people, might cause a change. But the law has to be shown to be a real threat for that to happen.

"Send a spam, go to jail" needs to be the slogan.

I often say spammers have to be considered as gangs of thieves. That sounds like hyperbole, but I mean it. Would people say "So much for anti-theft laws - we PASSED A LAW, and the theft didn't stop!". I predict there's going to be quite a few of these sorts of complaints in the next few weeks (no offense to Dave). And endless Libertarian posturing: "Spam didn't stop! CAN-SPAM is useless! See, government doesn't work!"

Think of organized crime. Organized crime doesn't stop because there's a law passed against them. They stop when there are enough prosecutions so the leaders worry they will be next in line for a jail cell. Spammers won't stop until they see some criminal prosecutions come down, and have a strong worry they will be next.

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)