A spam kingpin was recently sentenced heavily for his actions. This is excellent. Everyone hates spam. Most people have some sort of spam filter to deal with it. I myself have dealt with is to the maximum, which I have discussed to a great extent in previous posts. Here is a good post about sendmail and how it integrates with spamassassin:

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/ubuntu-debian-spamassassin-integrate-into-sendmail/

Ultimately you can practically eliminate spam but further introducing blackhole lists to sendmail:

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/sendmail-blackhole-list-eliminate-most-spam/

http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/sendmail-more-domain-blacklisting-to-prevent-spam/

Some progress has been made on the other end of the spectrum.

One of the most notorious U.S.-based spammers was sentenced to more than four years in jail on Monday for a scheme that used spam to manipulate stock prices in order to make a profit.[Source]