Interesting interview over at news.com with John Levine, co-chair of the Internet Research Task Force's Anti-Spam Research Group.

“I tell people that dealing with spam is like curing cancer. For example, cancer isn't one disease; it's 100 diseases, and you will need to come up with a 100 cures for it. Another way spam is like cancer is that when you try to cure cancer, you need to come up with something that will kill the cancer without killing the patient. If you kill the patient, it is easy to get rid of the cancer.”

Not sure I agree with all his positions, particularly with the stated need for new laws (although I agree the ones on the books now are ineffective). He may be right, but technology changes are what's really needed in the absence of laws that will actually work. Besides, I'm not exactly a big fan of lots of laws.

Good read though. And if you're a security-watcher, The Get Up To Speed on Enterprise Security feature at news.com (RSS feed here) is a good place to watch.