Top spammer arrested in Seattle

We all battle day in and day out against spam. The business of spam has launched several kind of new businesses, with one set towards how to easily harvest spam, send spam on a cheap way, use remote servers under control to send spam and so on; and the other kind of ventures deal with the defeat of spam - tools to control spam such as spam filters, to prevent servers from becoming rogue machines. This battle between spam senders and spam preventers is a difficult battle, with the level of technology becoming much higher.
There are legislations against spam, and spam costs industry a fair deal, costing now billions of dollars in spent time, in the cost of carrying such extra messages, and in the usage of anti-spam tools. In such a case, if people sending spam can be caught, and there are supposedly just supposed to be a few high senders of spam, maybe we can get some relief.
Well, it happened. In Seattle, a prolific spammer, Robert Alan Soloway was arrested on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud and other charges. Investigators believe him responsible for millions of email. He has been arrested in the past, but awards against him have not been collected because his bank accounts remain elusive. Refer this report:

The war against spam seems to be never-ending, but a small battle was won earlier this week. Robert Alan Soloway, 27, was arrested Wednesday in Seattle on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Soloway pleaded not guilty to all charges. "Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners. Our investigators dubbed him the Spam King because he is responsible for millions of spam e-mails," Jeffrey Sullivan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, said in a statement.
Soloway allegedly spammed the masses in email fraud since 2003 by using hijacked computers from around the world, and covered his tracks using Chinese servers, fabricated websites and stolen identities. Anti-spam agency Spamhaus once named Soloway in its top ten list of worst offenders, though he’s since been outpaced by even greater threats from eastern Europe. "He is one of the bad ones. He's one of the longest-running and uses criminal methods all the time," said John Reid, an investigator with Spamhaus. "Anyone on the Web for a while would have received one of Soloway's spams."

This is certainly good news, but is this going to be enough ? One caught will be replaced by another, and in a location where they cannot be arrested so easily. It is also incumbent upon email providers to work in such a way that they can prevent spam methods such as spoofing more easily, and stop spam in its source. Making spamming an even greater offence is another way of stopping this, but cooperation is required with countries of eastern europe and China in this regard as well.