Consider the fax machine: it gets no spam. Consider the cell phone: it gets no spam. Before any fax-spam or cell-spam racket could start, the guys who didn’t want spam got the law on their side.
It’s too late to stop email spam, even if we tried. As spam-merchants piously point out, there are first-amendment rights involved here. (Errr–why did the founding fathers want to protect misleading subject lines and spoofed return addresses….?)
Third-World farmers plant crops on land they don’t own, and hope to gather a harvest. Third-World fisherman depend on rivers and streams they have no power to protect from pollution. If you depend on the Web of information, fun, or maybe your livelihood–your situation is not so very different.