Comments:

1) HUGE numbers of small business owners operate online and depend upon email to stay in touch with customers, deliver products, send subscription newsletters, etc., including the great numbers who may not be able to earn a sufficient living in the general work force. 2) This helps the U.S. economy in terms of increased flow of cash and increased tax revenues 3) These legitimate businesses are not the perpetrators of s^p^a^m 4) We don't believe the Act was designed to hurt these legitimate online businesses, but rather, to curtail s^p^a^m 5) These business owners run true opt-in lists and/or newsletters that give opt-out directions in every issue. Opt-out requests are honored 6) Most of those email newsletters are ad-supported publications. This is a business model that is almost universal in the world of periodical publications, and should not be considered as s^p^a^m 7) Both suppression lists and a “Do Not E-mail” Registry would bring financial hardships resulting in many of these online business owners going out of business. 8) We would like for newsletters using affirmative consent opt-in requests to be considered as relationship or transactional email messages and not considered the “commercial email” the Act is intended to control 9) We would like for newsletters using affirmative consent opt-in requests to be exempted from the provisions of the Act. I, for one publish an e-magazine publication and contribute a HEALTHY amount of taxes to the US Government EVERY year- enforcing such ridiculous rules will only crush the small businesses that president Bush is trying to help. I urge you to take the needs of online small businesses very seriously and to really think about who you are going to hurt by passing these rules. The spammers are out of the country - we, U.S. citizens abide by the rules - you are going to stamp out any hopes of the American Dream for a lot of people in this country, which is TRULY a shame.