The federal government is really cracking down on spammers. Here’s a video of the feds processing spam complaints:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjarLbD9r30

The federal government hopes its criminal prosecution of spammers will act as some sort of deterrent. On Friday, two men who were convicted of spamming millions with pornographic emails were sentenced to five to six years in prison.

I suppose prison time is a sharp deterrent to just about any crime, from murder to shoplifting. But read the details of that story. Jeffrey A. Kilbride and James R. Schaffer, who were convicted in June, earned $1 million in just over a year in 2003. That’s a lot of money for a business that requires very little overhead.

These two men were charged in part under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act, which bans false and misleading header information and subject lines, requires opt-out methods for recipients of spam (for those of us who are stupid enough to click on anything in a spam message), and mandates that commercial email be clearly identified as an advertisement.

I don’t know about you, but a few dozen spam messages have gotten through the filters on my various email addresses today, and absolutely none of the senders of those messages adhered to any of these requirements.

Hence, the video of Charlie Chaplin above.

But the feds will continue to fight the good fight. Last week, the FTC ordered a halt to spam messages from a company called eHealthylife.com, which was offering “Hoodia” weight loss products and human growth hormone. The FTC is planning to prosecute the company and its owners for violating the CAN-SPAM act.

It’s good that the federal government is making an effort here, but this strategy is similar to building a moat around a sandcastle at the beach. Digging a hole in the sand won’t stop the ocean from washing over it. The vast majority of email traffic across the globe is made up of spam. Prosecuting one case at a time might deter some potential spammers, but it won’t stop all of them.

Analysts have repeatedly told me that Internet service providers (ISP) are the key here. They have to step up their efforts to monitor how their networks are used. They should be policing their own IP addresses for spam abuse. Unfortunately, so many spammers rely on ISPs based in the developing world, where the regulatory environment is pretty loose. The FTC could require better policing by every U.S.-based ISP, and spam would still be flooding our inboxes.