[timr]

Ha! I'm neither a libertarian nor a technoanarchist -- in fact, I'm frequently arguing with those types on HN. But thanks for the laugh.

Laws have room for interpretation, but again, they can't be written in a way that includes legitimate uses as illegal behavior, or the law is worse than useless. Define a rule that says (essentially) "you know spam when you see it", and you end up where pornography is: email marketing will be legal, with random, ineffective, arbitrary restrictions that make business within the domain unseemly and difficult.

Said another way: criminalize unsolicited email and only criminals will send emails.

[alanh]

Well, that’s true — I don’t want all unsolicited email to be banned — although the types of unsolicited mail I want are narrow enough to almost be defined (and thus solicited).

There is perhaps a distinction that could go really far, though: unsolicited email from and on behalf of an individual, not a company, legal entity, or service provider, is 1000× more likely to be acceptable than the latter!