Comments:

D1: any unsolicited emails. PERIOD! I do not wish to receive email for any commercial solicitation that I did not request. E.2.-3: if the refer a friend also harvests the email of the person it's being sent to, then YES the original sender should be held liable to conform to the act for it. 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 do not believe the Act was designed to hurt 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.