[Arthalion]

Please enlighten me as to how American legislation will affect spammers from the other 199 countries in the world.

Go after the source! We need to establish that that the legal liability for spam is SHARED by the company that hires the spammer. The people sending the spam are rarely the same ones selling the viagra pills, penis enlargers, and porn sites...the actual spammers are usually third-party companies hired specifically to send the email. The spammers will start seeing REAL hits to their bottom lines when their customers start getting sued for THEIR actions! If YOUR company hires SpamSender Inc to send 15,000 spam messages to advertise YOUR product, YOU should be held liable for a fair amount of damages (say...$100 per email, we've got to make this HURT!)

And what about international sellers? You WOULDN'T have to sue them in foreign courts, you could sue them in U.S. courts and get a judgement here (the offense was committed here, so it's U.S. jurisdiction). After that, you can have all of their incoming products seized by Customs until they either pay up or go out of business!

Believe me, if these companies start suffering real financial damage, they'll stop hiring the spammers to hawk their products.

[xrp]

Ok, I have a solution for all of this. Start charging for local calls only and charge more for long distance. Likewise charge for emails sent. This way, you still have the freedom to call wherever, whenever you want and it becomes cost prohibitive for telemarketers and spammers to do their thing.

Every think this is a good idea?