Comments:

Thank you for the opportunity for voice my views here. First of all I feel that the spam is a problem and am happy steps are being taken to control it. It is a complicated issue because you have web site owners like myself who provide a service and a subscription only mailing on a monthly basis. When people request to be on our mailing list it is to receive a complimentary journal; it is easy to be removed from our list. We also have a daily quote that people choose to send as a gift to a friend, and we provide complimentary ecards which are very popular. In this legislation we must be careful not to through out the "baby with the bathwater" so to speak. There are honest and clean lists our there which are voluntarily signed on and off to. This is in no way the same as spam. I often get emails asking why we don't have automatic mailing of the daily quote. I explain that in anticipation of increased spam, we opted not to offer that service. Out site, www.dailyzen.com is a service site with a subscriber base of about 36,000 people I personally update and maintain an active list. We do occasionally receive bounced email from AOL which is puzzling since it is not spam, but a volunteer subscriber base. When I receive those, I remove them from our list. But I am unsure whether AOL is just removing them without realizing that someone has chosen the service. I hope you will use good judgment in this legislative act. Many people come to Daily Zen for inspiration and refreshment. I trust this act will not get in the way of the honest and real sites out there. Thank you, Elana BlueStone, Vice President Daily Zen