Leader: Fighting spam - policy-makers muddy the waters

At the EEMA spam conference this week there appeared to be two very distinct groups of people - albeit united by a common desire to stamp out unsolicited email.

First there were the technologists. They spoke in terms of facts, figures, answers and solutions.

Second were the policy-makers who spoke in 'ifs and buts' and talked of grey areas and inconsistencies.

While technologists were telling us how to swim against the tide of spam, the policy-makers were doing a very effective impression of somebody 'drowning not waving'.

To be fair, the policy-makers are in a no-win situation. Governments have to be seen to be doing something. It's as much about perception as impact.

To throw up their hands and say "There's nothing we can do" would be honest but it wouldn't be a real vote-winner among the general public enraged by the spam in their Hotmail accounts.

Speaking at the conference silicon.com's own Will Sturgeon raised the question of whether anti-spam legislation is "even worth the paper it's written on" - a suggestion which UK assistant data commissioner Phil Jones was quick to address in his own speech.

His Irish counterpart, data commissioner Joe Meade, also made a case for the part legislation has to play. He insisted he has powers to prosecute and, like the UK's Jones, he spoke of his intention to do so with any spammers within his jurisdiction.

Meade told delegates: "The time for talking is over. It's now time for action."

Yet such bullish statements probably don't overly concern the 200 or so spammers currently sunning themselves beside the pool in Boca Raton in Florida, while their servers in Beijing are belching out millions of emails per day.

These people are criminals. They know what they are doing is against the law and frankly they are unlikely to care about the machinations of European governments.

If you want to stop your home being broken into you fit better locks and windows - you don't rely upon the law acting as a deterrent. The fact burglaries happen tells us this isn't an option.

Similarly, the only way to defeat the spammers is to stop their emails reaching the intended recipients. Of course, in an ideal world there is another way. Those recipients would stop replying and stop purchasing and spam would cease tomorrow but this isn't going to happen.

The trick will be to create a financial disincentive. Currently spammers rely on about one sale per million emails and their margins are pretty fragile. When that figure becomes one in two million, three million, four million you will see a massive decline in the amount of spam.

When something stops being economically viable it stops being attractive - the spammers aren't doing it for fun, they're doing it for money.

Cut off the money and you cut off the spam. And technology can erase those wafer-thin margins.