Ah, but wait – the wise Arnold Kling proposes the following:

Perhaps we should think about the issue differently. The problem is that businesses pay spammers to send spam. Presumably, they do this because it is profitable. Presumably, this is because there are woodheads out there who buy goods and services from spammers.

Perhaps instead of trying to attack the problem by going after spammers, what we should be doing is going after the woodheads. It is almost impossible to enforce a law against sending spam. So we should try to pass a law against responding to spam.

What I propose is that any American who makes a purchase based on unsolicited email be fined $10,000 and jailed for 30 days. The law would be enforced by undertaking random audits of companies that are successful at attracting business by using spam. The law would be highly publicized by internet service providers and corporate CIO’s, who have a strong interest in reducing the volume of spam. Thus, everyone with an Internet account would be on notice that purchasing from a spammer can get you in trouble.

If we can deter Americans from responding to spam, then spammers will stop routing spam to domains in the U.S. That’s my solution.