Yeah I think we should have done both. Made this illegal, and stopped it via encrypted channels.

Computers are fast now. We should just encrypt everything that gets sent over the open internet.

The IETF put out a statement about this a few years ago. I agree with their stance.

> The IAB urges protocol designers to design for confidential operation by default. We strongly encourage developers to include encryption in their implementations, and to make them encrypted by default. We similarly encourage network and service operators to deploy encryption where it is not yet deployed, and we urge firewall policy administrators to permit encrypted traffic.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iab-statement-on-...

Encrypted channels as the solution to people's problems is exactly what Poul-Henning Kemp warned against in his last Bikeshed: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3818307