The following editorial appeared in the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday.

The money may never be collected, but it’s the thought that counts.

And the thought of a federal judge in Davenport, Iowa, was that e-mail spam is such a costly nuisance that three companies who were identified as generators of the cyberjunk ought to pay an Internet service provider more than $1 billion for subjecting his subscribers to it.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Wolle ordered AMP Dollar Savings Inc. of Mesa, Ariz., to pay $720 million and Cash Link Systems Inc. of Miami to pay $360 million. The third company, Florida-based TEI Marketing Group, was ordered to pay $140,000.

The ruling came Friday in a suit filed by Robert Kramer, owner of an Internet service provider with about 5,000 customers in eastern Iowa. The judgment was entered as a default because none of the three companies appeared in court to answer the suit and regardless of their listed address, Internet spam generators can work from just about anywhere.

The dollar amount was based on an Iowa law that allows damages of up to $10 a spam message, and provisions for tripling the award under RICO, the federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations act, and an Iowa law known as the Ongoing Criminal Conduct Act. Robert Kramer, owner of the five-employee Internet service, said he hopes to at least recover his costs for pursuing the suit and wants to impose an economic death penalty on spammers who clog servers with unsolicited and unwanted e-mail.

At least he has an enforceable federal court order if the culprits can ever be identified.

Spammers, meantime, have a warning that the cheap business of bulk e-mailing can have very expensive consequences. The Internet has become an amazing tool for communication, information and productivity. Spam is a major threat to its potential because it takes up system space and human time.

Spammers obviously need some incentive to practice self-control. Perhaps Judge Wolle has provided it.