Different individuals define spam differently. Some consider all forms of UCE or unsolicited commercial postings spam. This means that if you send advertisements without prior permission from individuals you will get complaints. In all likelihood you will be reported as a spammer. Because service providers generally have user agreements that are stricter than current U.S. state and federal laws, you are likely to be reprimanded, have your site shut down, and/or be put on a blacklist if you send out UCE.

* Spam/UCE Law

As of this writing there are no U.S. federal laws governing UCE. Some states, however, have laws that regulate UCE. These states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. Depending on state, allowable claims range from $10 per message up to unlimited damages. Most state laws allow opt-out procedures. In other words, companies can *legally* add a recipient's email to a list without his/her knowledge as long as a means of removal is provided. For details by state, go to http://law.spamcon.org/us-laws/index.shtml.

International laws are stricter. Seven countries - Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Norway - have opt- in laws. In order to legally send UCE, you must first have recipient's permission. Other countries have opt- out directives or pending legislation. EuroCAUCE provide details at http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/countries/index.html.

Worldwide, there is much discussion about UCE and laws are changing quickly. There are several sites you can monitor for details about UCE. These include SpamCon Foundation (law.spamcon.org), Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE, www.cauce.org), and spam section of The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Abuse/Spam).

* More Email Marketing Resources

SpamCon Help for Email Marketers: http://www.spamcon.org/marketers/index.shtml

SpamCon Links to Blacklists: http://www.spamcon.org/directories/shared-blacklists.shtml

WebSiteMarketingPlan.com Links to Email Advertising Resources http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/sr10.htm

Wilson Internet Links to Email Advertising Articles http://www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=me_Email- Gen

Bobette Kyle is author of "How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Web Site Marketing." She used techniques detailed in the book to bring her own site, WebSiteMarketingPlan.com, from a ranking of 17 million to 59 thousand+ in less than four months. http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com/sr.htm

As far as I am concerned, if my subscriber does not receive my email because their mail box is full, it is their loss - not mine.

My advertisers do not lose out either as I take these undeliverable emails into account when posting my subscriber numbers, officially listed as 6384 this week.

Imagine how much less email would be floating around if they would simply NOT tell me it was not delivered.

Perhaps biggest such offender is Exim, http://www.exim.org/

"Exim is a message transfer agent (MTA) developed at University of Cambridge for use on Unix systems connected to Internet.

It is freely available under terms of GNU General Public License. Its facilities are extensive and in particular it has some defenses against mail bombs and unsolicited junk mail in form of options for refusing messages from particular hosts, networks, or senders."

It is unfortunate that we as email recipients can not refuse email from them!

This organization is otherwise providing an invaluable service online and at no charge to those that use their software.

Yet feature of reply to senders when recipients do not receive email is clogging and choking off free flow of Internet email system.

And this is not only problem generated by and from established, legal sources of email delivery.

Viruses!

The Love Virus that circled globe in 2000 caused over a billion dollars in damage to businesses and individuals.

Daily, I receive scores of infected emails that I simply delete.

So why is this problem allowed to continue?

Why are viruses not deleted by those computers set up to forward email around world and that form key parts of what we know as Internet?

All of this excessive email flow and virus email is causing us "Email Crush!"

It is time to express our opinions to people that can help us do something about these two major problems.

For FREE information on how and to whom you can voice your opinion, send a blank email to our auto-responder at: mailto:voice@emailexchange.org

We can make a difference!