Comments:

I support the creation of a national Do Not E-mail list. I publish a biweekly e-mail newsletter with 50,000 subscribers, all of whom have double opted-in to get it. Almost 7,000 of them have contributed a voluntary amount between $1 and $100 (average: approximately $15.00) to support it. This enables me and my 1.5 FTE assistants to devote our time to writing the newsletter and managing its customer-support aspects. E-mail is a "receiver pays" system, in which the sender pays little or nothing for each e-mail sent. The receiver pays for all transmission, storage, and resolution of every e-mail. For this reason, it is economically insane to allow senders to transmit bulk material to anyone who hasn't specifically requested such a relationship. The "free" nature of e-mail can only lead to a complete breakdown of the system, because people with something to sell will use it as often as possible until a total overload occurs -- unless strong laws forbid such use. I support e-mail being treated the same way that faxes are in the federal "junk fax" act. Sending unsolicited bulk messages should simply be prohibited, with significant fines and jail time for repeat offenders. There is no economic difference between bulk faxes, where the recipient pays for the paper and tied-up phone line, and bulk e-mail, where the recipient pays connect-time charges, storage charges, and labor to handle the flow. For this reason, I support a total ban on UBE, as was recently adopted by the European Union. To stop spam, it isn't necessary for us to catch the person who pressed "Enter," it's only necessary for us to fine and imprison the people whose products are advertised in the spam messages. These people have credit-card accounts and other mechanisms to accept money, which make them easy to identify. While I'd prefer a complete ban on UBE, for the basic economic reasons stated above, I do support a Do Not E-mail list as the next best thing. It's absurd for a marketer to claim that a "pre-existing business relationship" should entitle a business to send spam until the recipient is forced to visit the sender's Web site to try to stop it. Jakob Neilsen, the famed usability researcher at Useit.com, found that the average time it takes an end user to unsubscribe from an e-mail newsletter is 3 minutes and 5 seconds. It therefore takes consumers more than an hour to unsubscribe from a mere 20 different lists. If a brand has a newsletter that is genuinely wanted, consumers will grant that brand the right to send it. I realize that many people work in the direct-response industry and are accustomed to building lists and then renting them for direct-mail purposes. But postal mail is a sender-pays system. E-mail is not. Permission-based e-mail, in which a consumer at address A grants assent to send bulk e-mail only to a single marketer at address B (and to no one else), is the only legitimate way that a receiver-pays system can be used. Best wishes, Brian Livingston Editor, Brian's Buzz on Windows: http://BriansBuzz.com Contributing Editor, Datamation: http://BrianLivingston.com Co-Author, "Windows Me Secrets": http://bri.li/0764534939 *REDACTED PERSONAL INFORMATION*