"J. Noel Chiappa" wrote: > > > From: Richard Shockey <richard@shockey.us> > > >> The internet is not the street. Someone is selling a product. In order > >> to sell a product you must be able to reach them. If you can reach > >> them, you can find a way to deal with them legally. > > > FTC staff randomly looked at about 2000 spam messages collected > > internally from FTC mail servers and were able to identify that 80% of > > the SPAM contained phone numbers addresses or other contact data that > > could be traced to and individual or business domiciled in the United > > States. > > Think this through for a few seconds, eh? As soon as it becomes legally less > viable to operate via spam when you're in the US, people will simply either > i) wash all commmunications through offshore sites which can't be traced back > to the US, or ii) move their entire operations offshore. > That was certainly the case for premium rate services via the phone network - especially ii). Not an exact analogy, and needed 'tolerant' or sympathetic local telcos / governments (think Netherlands Antilles) ......