Their hijacked relays and "bulletproof" providers are, but if one follows the money, they are nearly all right here. The Direct Marketing Association has managed enough bribes every time an antispam bill comes up to weaken and sabotage them.
A new technique is to infect machines connected to high speed cable with trojans that allow them to become spam hydrants in the background. This is good, since it is inarguably criminal, and in the future will provoke even more outrage. Though it has died out in e-mail spam, the "Download the latest Microsoft Patch" effort is still being frantically spammed on the newsgroups.