A hidden scrap of copyrighted poetry embedded in e-mails will be used to guarantee that any message containing the verse is spam free. And if spammers dare to hijack the haiku, they will be aggressively sued for copyright infringement.

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The service is being offered by "Habeas," a new spam-filtering service headed by anti-spam activist and attorney Anne P. Mitchell.

Habeas doesn't stop spam by blocking suspicious e-mail. It prevents it by aggressively monitoring who is using the service to send mail, and then allowing people to set up e-mail program filters specifying that all messages containing the Habeas haiku should be delivered -- no matter how "spammy" the contents might appear to the average e-mail filter.

E-mail filters are lists that block or redirect the delivery of e-mail that comes from known spammers, or messages that contain words and phrases typically found in spam. But legitimate e-mail may also contain references to the sorts of health, sexual, financial and legal issues that often appear in standard spam.

Due to increasingly aggressive filtering, publishers of subscription e-mail newsletters complain that they are being forced to self-censor their publications, carefully omitting phrases or sometimes even deliberately misspelling words that might trigger a spam filter.

Writers, reporters and editors say that some e-mailed stories and news releases never arrive at their destinations due to spam filtering.

And a number of people from Asian countries -- increasingly the subjects of wide-scale spam blocks -- have all but given up on sending messages to their friends and colleagues in the United States and Europe.

And still the spam keeps coming.

"Existing law offers little protection from spammers, who continue to find new ways to beat even the most sophisticated filtering technologies," Mitchell, former legal affairs director for Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), said.

"Technology alone can't stop spam. But existing copyright and trademark law used in conjunction with Habeas' system allows us to sue and shut down spammers while protecting senders of legitimate mail."

Mitchell says if a spammer uses the Habeas haiku along with other trademarked text in an e-mail, Habeas can and will seek penalties of $1 million and more for copyright and trademark violation. It will also help shut down offenders' businesses through legal injunctions and -- in the worst cases -- refer them for criminal prosecution.

Dun and Bradstreet have agreed to serve as Habeas' collection agency, Mitchell said. And several major commercial spam filtering services, such as "Spam Assassin" and "Mail-Filters.com" intend to add Habeas to their spam-filtering arsenal.

Habeas also intends to provide lists of unrepentant spammers to maintainers of the "blacklists," which many systems administrators use to block all e-mail from known spammers.

Some publishers of small, subscription-based newsletters say they welcomed the new filtering system since it's becoming increasingly difficult to deliver their product past spam filters. The struggle has forced many to self-censor the information they provide to their subscribers.