Comments:

Since 1996 I have built an opt-in mailing list of 26,000 small business owners for a newsletter I write called Marketing-Ideas-by-Email. http://ideasiteforbusiness.com The list has been built mostly through word-of-mouth. The purpose of the newsletter is to supply new ideas (at no charge to the subscriber) to help small business owners promote and market their businesses. Since small business provides the backbone of employment in the U.S., small business owners need help in growing their businesses. The newsletter provides a service that really helps people. The CAN-SPAM Law is making it harder for these helpful ideas to reach my subscribers. I know that spam is out of control on the Net, but legitimate small business owners such as myself who take the time and make the effort to help colleagues across the US need to be able to get the info through. Do I consider myself a spammer? Absolutely not...and I abhore the practice. No one, and I mean no one, receives the newsletter who hasn't signed up though our Web site. The email addresses on the list are protected and kept private and always have been...since 1996. Our unsubscribe requests are automatically processed through our ESP, but if someone contacts me to unsubscribe, I personally unsubscribe the address from the list, and have done so since 1996. The reality: the legitimate opt-in email newsletter list owners have been following the CAN-SPAM rules years before the legislation was even written. The real culprits are the folks who are harvesting email addresses off the Web and selling them to the idiots who are trying to make a quick buck. In reality the real information that people need is not getting through.