I don't really want to get into an ethics debate, and I thought I was pretty clear about what I thought of using harvested emails for the purpose of spam. Soliciting is soliciting, whether electronic, by phone, snail mail, or door-to-door. I am not interested in using the "ethics" club to bludgeon free speech, whether it's opinions I don't like or offers to buy more crap. I should be able to request in any medium that I not be contacted again, once that initial solicitation has been made.

I also think sending anonymous spam should be a felony-- I put it on the same level as cracking passwords without permission-- attempts to subvert systems for unauthorized use. Other than mauling my email address to inhibit simple (or even the new-and-improved) harvesting, I cannot think of a single way to post information in public, and not expect the public to use that information if they want. Does robots.txt have an email solicitation "opt-in" flag?