Reply #17: The damage caused by spammers is

[entanglement]

enormous. They drive up bandwidth costs for everyone. Spam-bots are major drivers of 'zombie' PCs. Spam unnecessarily congests networks, and a lot of it is attempted online fraud (ex. Nigerian scams), not to mention that it makes inbox management a nightmare. Lock the spammer up and throw away the key, I say. Do that to a few of these lowlifes and it will deter the rest of 'em. (however tough sentences won't deter spammers living outside the US, we'll need international cooperation to do that)