Anyone who uses email knows that spam, unsolicited commercial messages, is a frustrating and growing problem. Offers of herbal Viagra, miracle organ enhancement schemes, and those "urgent and confidential" financial scams clog inboxes and waste valuable server space.

Spam now accounts for more than 56 percent of all email. That tide of trash has launched a rather frenzied search for answers. Indeed, the problem has become so irritating that even lesstechnical types in Congress and state legislatures are busy looking for solutions. But the problem doesn.t stop at national boundaries.