July 4, 2004: Our Congressmen Are Soooo Smart.

About six months ago, our elected representatives here in the United States were congratulating themselves on their solution to the spam problem.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, anti-spam vendor Commtouch recently reported that the U.S. was responsible for 55.69% of all spam in June, and global spam has increased 42% since the "Yes! You CAN Spam!" law went into effect on January 1st. MessageLabs estimated that 76% of all e-mail during May was unsolicited comercial e-mail, and a survey by the Bank of Scotland reports that 1 in 10 small businesses in the UK is losing more than £10,000 per year to spam in lost productivity and filtering costs. (That sounds hauntingly familiar to a certain small business in the U.S.)

And most recently, UK technology news site The Register dubbed the U.S. part of the "Axis of Spam."

With results like these, we should encourage our government to address other problems - problems we really don't care if anyone ever solves . . .

Speaking of which, now might be a good time to tell your congressman that you will NOT appreciate it if he votes for the Yes! You CAN Spam! approach to spyware.
-- Giles Schildt

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