Spam will be eliminated in 18 months

I predict that spam, at least spam as we now it now, will be eliminated by September, 2005, probably sooner.

With 83% of the mail sent to Hotmail.com addresses, the epidemic is great enough to bring out the big artillery to combat it.  The various state (like in Washington) and Federal laws are good intentions, but without the ability to identify the spammer, is useless.

If however, you can identify the spammer, then the threat of real legal action can make a difference.  There are a couple of plans in the works to identify spammers, including one from Microsoft.  Given the size of the problem, I expect that the usual debates over which technology is better will give way to rapid adoption.