On the local (Australian) front (pardon the cliché), the of a tough national Spam law has received , and looks set to pass when it is next month.
Under the proposed legislation, entities engaging in electronic mass-mail practices face penalties of over $1 million a day. The penalties may be clear (and rather hefty, especially when compared to other, , corporate practices), but far more hazy are details surrounding jurisdiction. Presumably, only Australian, for-profit organisations will be subject to the new law, which will render it pretty much useless.
Those few businesses which do spam from within Australia are likely to be large enough to be able to afford a with which to artfully dodge any penalty (for example, by claiming the user is at fault or embedding indemnifying disclaimers into the e-mails themselves; even if these defences fail, they could always claim a rogue representative of the company sent the mail, or a satisfied customer, since it would be difficult to obtain the IP address from which the mail was sent). For these reasons the legislation is unlikely to be effective. We need a worldwide collaboration on unsolicited electronic mail if we're going to get anywhere.