According to an Associated Press report, the ITU says that "The vast majority is generated by a few hundred people, but authorities are not able to prosecute many of them under current legislation."

The ITU is host in Geneva this week to a meeting of regulators from 60 countries as well as various international organizations, including the Council of Europe and the World Trade Organization, to discuss ways of standardizing legislation to make it easier to prosecute spam offenders.

The meeting's chair, Robert Horton, who is also acting chief of the Australian communications authority, believes we have "an epidemic on our hands that we need to learn how to control," and that "international co-operation is the ultimate goal."

The AP report states:

"The UN agency said it would put forward examples of anti-spam legislation which countries can adopt to make cross-border co-operation easier. Many states currently have no anti-spamming laws, making it difficult to prosecute in combating the international phenomenon."

Top priority, says Horton, is "pornographic material...that may come to the attention of children. I think it's time we did something formally about this."

"If we don't work together," adds Robert Shaw, the ITU's Internet strategy expert, "we may see millions of people abandoning the Net entirely out of frustration and disgust."

• Practical Methods for Combatting Spam
• Spam: Important First Step by Congress Against the Spammers
• Spam About the "CAN-SPAM" Act...from a US Government Office
• LWM Speaks with Julian Field