News about Italian spam:

Senders of unsolicited junk e-mails in Italy will now face jail sentences of up to three years, according to Italian media reports.

The country's privacy watchdog issued the ruling in an attempt to limit the huge amount of advertising and promotional material sent online.

Sending e-mails without the permission of the receiver is against the law in Italy.

Offenders now risk fines of up to 90,000 euros and between six months and three years in prison, if it is proved that they did it to make a profit.

The ruling follows estimates by the European Commission that spam e-mails cost EU companies approximately 2.25bn euros in lost productivity last year.

EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.

Most spam comes from the United States and China, and will be outside its reach.

If that's so, you wonder what the real point of this is. Expect calls for world government to deal with this. Sorry: "global governance".