Spam – that most modern of irritants – can at times seem like an unstoppable plague. By some reckonings, spam accounts for over 90% of all email traffic.

That inevitably, places a financial burden on businesses, which are forced to pay for filtering the unwanted emails out.

However, in a recent court case, anti-spam campaigner, Gordon Dick, won his court case against a spammer that had sent him a single unsolicited email. The economics of the case give pause for thought.

Dick was awarded £750 damages. Given that 7 billion spam messages are sent each month, a fine of £750 per message would soon discour-age others. Using such calculations, the potential monthly damages for spam would be £5.25 trillion, a figure close to the total global GDP generated for the period.

But while Dick is happy to help others gain recompense in the fight against spam – via his scotchspam.org.uk website – potential litigants should be warned: As of the time of writing, Dick has yet to receive a penny of the damages he was awarded.

As with so many get-rich-quick schemes, getting hold of the promised riches can be tough.