Comments:

Most of the businesses that I work for use email to send newsletters or e-zines to their clients and prospects. These are sent either to subscribers or to prospects who have expressed an interest in the company. The last group, unsubscribed prospects, only get one copy of the email with an invitation to continue. They must reply (subscribe) in order to continue receiving the ezine, if no response is received their address is dropped from the list. The total number of emails sent in any one of these is less than 10,000, most mailings being around 5000. Would continuing to use these guidelines be a violation of the act as it now stands? If so, I think the Act should be adjusted to allow for some reasonable level of commerce. I do appreciate the problem with true spammers. They slow down, or even halt, communications for legitimate business, shut down servers and wreck havoc with the internet in general. And not many people enjoy getting those 'naked teens' emails in their boxes every AM. But this requires emails be sent in the 100's of thousands or millions. Most legitimate businesses do not send email in this volume. Last comment - be careful that you are not shutting down legitimate commerce. I view my email box the same as my (paper) mail box. Some days both of them get a little stuffed with ads or commercial post cards or magazines that I did not subscribe to. I feel a lot better about hitting the delete key on my computer than I do about having to put the paper in the trash / recycle bin. Removing a few bytes from my computer isn't going to pollute anything like killing those trees did. Like making the mailing of pornography illegal - I appreciate the gov't attempt to clean up the commercial email industry. Just please - please - do not squash the legitimate attempts of Americans to do business with each other and the rest of the world.