The point is that collective intelligence is likely better than an individualistic approach to combating spam. When we start pining for the "good ol' days" of junk mail and telemarketing, we clearly need to find solutions. Filtering probably isn't going to cut it.

afaik
Email has to go thru a SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server - therefore why doesnt the server check it against a list of known spammers before it's past on

Also, if someone receives a spam email - should be able to tell a central register (after the email is verified as spam) - that information to be quickly sent to all the worlds servers - to not allow email from that source

While Yahoo, Google, MSN, Symantec/Norton (and so on) update their own spam-list based on user feedback - Id like to see a independent central list