Keeping -- or even abandoning -- weak anti-spam laws forces us all to use the delete key -- no doubt at the expense of doing something productive on our computers. Those who dangle the delete key to stem spam perpetuate the problem because the delete key presumes spammers have a right to use our private property for the storage of their advertising.

When you establish an account with an Internet Service Provider, you are allocated a fixed amount of storage space for incoming email. You, not the spammers, pay for that space. This storage space holds all your incoming email until downloaded onto your home computer or read and deleted through a web-based email reader. When that space fills up, all incoming email is rejected. To store all the incoming spam, ISPs must buy more storage space and pass the cost on to customers. When you download the spam onto your laptap via cellphone so you can delete the spam from your laptop, you, not the spammer, pay for those daytime cellphone minutes.

The delete-key advocates hope you buy into the concept that spammers have a right to store their advertising on your rental property without your permission.

Yet these advocates of the delete key would be the first to jump up and fend off incursions into their property. Would the Seattle-PI let any of us insert advertising fliers -- without permission -- into each morning paper without a challenge? A call to the advertising department of the PI asking where fliers could be inserted into the morning papers got a clear response that the PI considers the paper to be their product and property, and that a person has to pay to have fliers included in the paper. You can bet the Seattle PI would initiate lawsuits to stop such freeloading. Yet the PI advocates technology, not strong law, as a way to curb spam.

What would happen if you walked into any retail store and tacked your business posters on the walls without permission? You know management would call security on the correct assumption that you have no right to put your advertising up in their space without permission. And if you persisted, you would probably end up in court under a civil or criminal complaint or both.

The delete key advocates -- primarily businesses and lawyers who represent those businesses -- are trying to hoodwink us into foregoing the same remedies -- such as law -- that they would themselves use to protect their own property.

Why the double standard? Simple. Businesses want to shift the cost of advertising from them to you and want to establish their right to use your storage space without permission.

The Washington State legislature has gone along with this misguided ethic. The current commercial email law, codified as RCW 19.190, does not ban spam. It says spammers must be honest. So, as long as they are honest they have a right to occupy our storage space? And send our children porn spam? The Washington State legislature has basically legalized the unauthorized use of your rental property.

Technology and law must work together against spam. Technology that protects your storage space and laws that give it away do not work together. A law similar to the anti-junk fax law, which recognizes the recipient's property and resources, should be passed. Opt-in, where you grant permission before any advertising is stored on your property, should be required. And the law should provide for a private right of action by victims -- individuals and Internet Service Providers. By empowering victims with legal recourse, we don't have to wait around for the Federal Trade Commission to stop talking and start acting. Or for the Washington Attorney General to file more than a few token lawsuits on a problem that affects millions of Washington State residents each day.

Yes, in the end, Washington's e-mail law should be deleted as the PI suggests -- but in favor of a real law that works with technology, not against it.