There has been a lot of talk about spam of late, and I thought I'd throw in my 2c.
I hate spam. I hate it with a deep and abiding passion. It is one of those things that manages to stir the deep pool of seething fury that lurks just below my austere exterior.
There are so many reasons I hate spam, I hardly know where to start.
Some might call it harsh if I was to say that I can't begin imagine what it must be like to be an email marketer for a product such as penis enlargement, or dodgy pharmaceuticals, or hot teen Webcam vixens, or '100% legitimate' university degrees. If I were to say I can't imagine what it must be like to have no soul; to have no respect for fellow human beings; to be so completely lacking in anything resembling intelligence that I would not take '.au' addresses out of my list of products only available in the US. And they'd be right. It would be harsh.
The talk these days about battling spam centres around whether one should take a defensive stance, and install filtering software or a subscribe to a Web filtering service, or whether one should take the fight to the spammers, and attempt to get governments involved.
I can see the merits of both approaches, although I believe in the long run the latter approach is the only one that will possibly stem the flow of spam, and bring it under control.
Ideally, we should have an option to put the equivalent of a 'no junk mail' sticker on our inbox, and anyone who abuses this warning should be held accountable by law.
At the moment in Australia, the Distribution Standards Board has a Code of Practice that is voluntarily adhered to by all paper advertising distributors that prevents unsolicited advertising material from being placed in any letterbox with a 'no junk mail' sticker.
While, personally, I can't see the day when the Viagra-touting cretins of the spam industry adhere to a voluntary code of practise, I can see governments doing something similar.
For, at the end of the day, every piece of spam has to have some kind of contact details to drive the unwitting end-user to point of purchase for their under-the-counter vacuum pump. If not, they are of far less use to the spammer.
As such, governments should be able to follow up and prosecute companies that violate the 'no junk mail' rules.
I can see some significant hurdles that need to be overcome to make this kind of scheme work, including getting foreign governments to agree to an international code of practice, and how it could be in enforced. Then again, I hate spam, and so do millions of other Net users. I'm sure there's sufficient motivation out there to get something done.
Mr Alston? Any ideas?