I’ve been saying for a couple of years now that the only way we’ll be able to get a handle on the spam problem is by making a fundamental change to the email protocols.  And for most of those two years, I’ve been inundated by messages from people saying that it’s not possible, that it’d cause too much upheaval, that any system could be broken anyway, and that I must be some kind of communist because I don’t believe that people sending email have some right to anonymity.  Not one of those messages, and none of the garbage I’ve seen regurgitated on Slashdot and other public forums have given any evidence of why this isn’t possible.  It’s all a bunch of reactionary scribbling by people who engage their fingers on the keyboard before they engage their brains.

Finally, about three years too late, knowledgeable people are beginning to poke their heads up out of the sand and step out from behind their proposed legislation, and saying what many of us have known for years: it’s time to rewrite the protocol.