The problem? When the U.S. Congress did finally get around to passing a law against spam -- the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 (aka the CAN SPAM Act) -- it was so toothless they needed polygrip to keep it in place. against giving the law real bite, so Congress spent more time coming up with a cute acronym than it did creating a law that would actually deter or punish spammers. Meanwhile, tougher state laws (like Virginia's) have been overturned due to First Amendment conflicts.

Back in 2003, spam constituted roughly half the e-mail sent over the Net. According to .

So how's that law working for y'all?

It happened again this week. Notorious junk e-mail king Spamford Wallace just got and violating the CAN SPAM Act. They might as well have made it $711 trillion. He's not going to pay it. The man has had at least two other multi-million-dollar judgments against him, and it hasn't done diddly. The handful of has done nothing to deter the rest either.

Why does this matter? Because spam is more than merely an annoyance. It's like a gateway drug (no pun intended) to all the harder stuff that slimes up the Internet: identity theft, malware infestations, fake pharmaceutical sales, and so on. You name it; if it's online and ugly, odds are it started in an e-mail (or, now, a tweet).