If you want to make money illegally, you have to have a willing partner. The person (euphemistically referred to as The Guy from here on), must be willing to give you money as part of the illegal transaction. Now, such as in the case of a protection racket, or a superior con, The Guy can be a dupe. But MOST times, The Guy knows that he is participating in something totally wrong.
An example of The Guy getting his just deserts is when The Guy's name gets published as part of a sting against prostitution setups. Eliot Spitzer is an example of The Guy. I don't actually think prostitution SHOULD be a crime, but it's on the books. As a result, I don't think it would be right for me to risk liberty and diet (I'd die from prison food-itis), just for a happy moment or two. I KNOW it's against the law.
Similarly, if somebody sidles up to me and offers to bump off a particularly nasty human being (You know who YOU are), even for the bargain-basement price of say 10 bucks, I'm smart enough to say no. Same goes for offering me a portion of Nigerian banking loot. In fact, most all Internet scams require stupidity to such a level, it's hard to imagine ANYBODY falling for them.
Which brings me to a possible solution to internet spam. Getting the people BEHIND the spam has been a losing proposition. A handful of purveyors of the problem have been jailed, as opposed to my solution, which involves Cuban Death Squads. Getting to them, as they increasingly are turning out to be Russian and Chinese organized crime figures, rather than the chubby kid living in the house he just bought for mom and dad, so he could continue living with them, has proven difficult. No, it's time to criminalize purchasing off spam.
Yep. The government of the worlds should band together. Monitor the spam and the payment/purchase method required to convert the spam into money for the spammer. If a person buys something through a spam offer, throw them in jail for six months. Their computer will provide all the evidence you need. So what if it was little Johnny doing the buying late at night when The Guy and his wife/girlfriend/mistress/boyfriend/significant other/plastic blow-up doll are upstairs sleeping. Guilty of lack of parental control. Six months. Double the sentence with each conviction.
I know this is more or less, a legislated Just-Say-No campaign. But consider the differences. You can basically use computers to do ALL of the legwork on this. No police cadets just out of the academy out there dressed drearily to catch dope peddlers. Silicon's cheap. No ridiculous PR events lauding the catching of some gigantic stash of drugs with an over-inflated media value. There WOULD NOT be any arrests of the spammers. Just an attempt to choke off the reasons spammers spam.
Money.
If there aren't any customers, there will be no spam. Well, no spam in its current form. Right now, spam works because a fraction of a per cent, say 0.001 per cent, of a spammed list of email addresses, responds to that spam. That is one in a hundred thousand. When you send out 100 million spam mails with the press of a finger, you are going to get a thousand responses. Make 20 bucks a pop and the finger you used to push the button, earned you 20 grand.
Under my scheme, the spammer still makes his 20 grand on message one. The government jails 10 per cent of the The Guys that paid up, cutting them out of answering the spammer's NEXT beckoning call to the foolish. It might take a series of 10 arrests or so, but eventually, the government gets all of The Guys who make the spammer's work profitable. Through education, scare tactics and actual incarceration, the spammer now finds his emails attract a profit of zero.
Not sure of why his once-profitable email campaign now COSTS him money, the spammer tries a few variations on the theme. Some momentarily revive the flagging profitability. But eventually, those tactics die out too. The spammer moves on to other crimes, such as protection and prostitution.
Look, if you're not The Guy, my plan has no effect on you. Sure, you might end up missing your next door neighbour for awhile, while he works off his time in Fool's Prison. But my guess is, that The Guy was probably a windbag and you didn't much enjoy having him and his family over for a barbeque all that much. And yes, you WILL have to monitor the family credit card and make sure Junior isn't doing his best to get you tossed into Fool's Prison. Might help to get on good terms with the kids.
But it will certainly make you feel better when you get up in the morning and see a mailbox empty, save for messages your kids and their spouses are sending you about the latest kid's birth, complete with pictures of the wizened little Yoda.
Assuming you're NOT The Guy.
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