how even this would help the Spam issue for any period of time. This thread has been fairly hard to follow, but I think I could try and summarize by pointing out that there are technical issues and political issues.

On it's most basic level, I don't agree with Ross that the delivery mechanism is the culprit. If we use physical mail instead of email his position is analogous to blaming the mailman/postal service for delivering junk mail. In fact, the only way that we can keep marketers from targeting (marking) us is to make it unprofitable for them to do so, by either charging for email or by not buying any of the wares they peddle that way.

In other words, even if a message is encrypted, it could be encrypted spam. It could be from a trusted server (non-blacklisted)(spoofed or not) and it could be in a host.allow table, blah, blah, blah. So, regardless of the mechanism, it doesn't address the problem. Which is what you guys are telling Ross.

In the meantime, we have a full time guy creating spam assasin rules and maintaining black lists and reporting (futile) abuses...

I'm affraid that the only way to kill the spam menace is through legislation. I'm even willing to see a per email surcharge, if implemented reasonably. For example, in Indiana they have a "no call" list and hefty fines for anyone who spams your phone. Since this went into effect, I haven't gotten more than four or five unsolicited phone calls in the past two years.