"J. Noel Chiappa" wrote:
> From: Richard Shockey <richard(_at_)shockey(_dot_)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)
......