Spam and laws

When I asked Larry Lessig why geeks don’t think of the law as a possible solution to their challenges, he told an interesting story:
He says he first realized the depth of the tech/politics disconnect after attending some of the first anti-spam conferences. At the conferences, geek after geek rose to discuss how to get another 5% improvement in filtering here, 3% incremental improvement in blocking there, or 5% by doing X or 10% by doing Y