Related link: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/view.html?pg=3
Lucas Graves interviewed Earthlinks Chief Privacy Officer, Les Seagraves, about fighting spam. He mentions AOL, Yahoo!, and Microsoft a couple of times, saying
As long as there’s something threatening to put them [spammers] out of business or make them pay a lot of money, they’ll think twice.
Maybe Microsoft’s legal department will turn out to be a force for good.
SPAM
One might wonder how serious Bill Gates is in eliminating ALL SPAM when he has a major investment in a pharmaceutical company (ICOS - he on the board of directors) whose primary product (Cialis) is competitor of Viagra. You can check out the board of directors of ICOS at www.icos.com Investor -> Coperate Governance then click on management and dirctors. In fact, the FTC recently fined Gates $800,000 for not following proper reporting procedures when he made an investment 2 years ago in ICOS (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2001918997_gates04.html).