Any product, service or business advertised by spam gets shut down relatively quickly. That's the need for the buffers you mention. The only way to spam is to illegally using services somewhere along the line.
What appropriate niche would you consider it for? Penis enlargement pills? Would you really recommend it to someone trying to start a forum (of all things)? What kind of visitors would show up to his site to post? Would he enjoy having to move the forum to a new server every couple days?
As for its effectiveness, out of miillions of messages sent out a spammer may get zero to three leads to make it worth their while versus the complaints. There's just nothing positive about the UCE industry anymore. My opinion wasn't much different than yours a few years ago, Chris. I was somewhat indifferent and probably opposed goverment regulation of it. I'm over the edge now. There's too much of it now to be good for anyone.
