Well, a quick, cursory google later and I've got more info. My suspicion was correct. Spam could be viewed as a "hostile" work environment that the company you work for needs to correct. That's too bad, because the company has no recourse against the spammers themselves. All it can do is block the spam, which may also block legitimate email coming in. Here's an interesting article from News.com about the danger that porn spams pose to a company. It turns out that if the company doesn't correct the problem, ie put in filtering, the complaintant can sue for damages. The damages are HUGE. There seems to be a mandatory punitive damage that's about $200k. Ugh. Yet another reason to hate the spammers.