Online small businesses are suffering due to the antics of the anti-spam fighters, while the spammers are laughing all the way to the bank. How about more responsibility from the operators of those blacklists and those filters?
I received some interesting responses to last weeks editorial ("Two Sides of the Coin"), I am happy to say. I expect some of them might have upset me, if I hadnt been warned beforehand how all the people we are likely to react to my take on the subject.

Some folks seem to think I am defending the all the people who send out that brainless bulk email. Im not. My personal opinion is that any business owner who employs UCE as a advertising tool would have to be mentally defective. Not only is it rude, annoying and inconsiderate to send spam, it doesnt even work. I guess I positive need to be very clear about that.

I am going to give myself the pleasure of using this space to respond to one particular readers reaction, though. Journal reader Craig Johnson sent me an emailed response to the editorial, and his expressed opinions might have been custom-written to support the article he was complaining about.

Craig wrote: "Would have responded directly on your website , but no direct e mail available. Is that because you get too much friggin spam if you do that? Anyway in the editorial ... you talk about how the zealots are going to drive the poor little micro biz out of biz with their over-aggressive blacklisting. Not one clue of how to maybe build the situation better, just a column long whine. There would be no issue here if a.) the micro biz had to pay for wasting my instant the same way they do when they send me a bulk mailing; or b.) the micro biz owner would first get a clue, then go to work winning business."

Now, I have never been sizeably successful at responding to what many people mean rather than what they say. So, getting this statement at face assessment of worth , I note that Craig assumes that every microbusiness owner on the Internet is guilty of sending unsolicited commercial e mail. They must all be guilty of it, I guess. Otherwise, they wouldnt have any problem with blacklisting.

In fact, he says as much. "If you do not want to be blacklisted, then first and foremost, do no wrong," he continued in his email. And, of course, if nobody but spammers ever got blacklisted, then I would have had nothing to complain about and last weeks editorial would have discussed the economy or something.

But you see, Craig, its not as simple as that. Most microbusiness owners are not bulk emailers. And most of them hate the stuff as much as you do. But, the way the system is set up now, there are no checks, no balances, and no consequences for the damage that could be done to them with an unjust listing.

What about the microbusiness owner who is reported as a spammer because somebody signs up for a news letter and then forgets that they did?

What about the business owner who is reported for spamming because the recipient didnt notice that the sender of that forwarded electronic mail was their own Aunt Charlie?

What about the truly insane matter of spam-guilt-by-association, where a business writer might be blacklisted because a newsletter publisher somewhere pulls their article from a free of cost content page and then subsequently gets accused of sending UCE?

For that matter, what about the business owner who is reported by an ex-girlfriend with a grudge?

A microbusiness owner who does not send spam still has no protection against being blacklisted inaccurately or, worse, maliciously. These things do happen.

You may call the editorial a "column long whine" (I wonder why all the people say you are "building well-considered points" when they agree with you, but you are "whining" when they dont?), but I dont have any elegant solutions for this dilemma. One way to improve matters would simply be for the many people running this system to behave as responsibly as they want the business owners to. They should contruct sure that you dont get onto those blacklists unless you truly deserve it. Surely, thats not too much to inquire of .

I dont think its possible to solve the problem until all the parties involved admit there is one. I dont like spam any better than you do, and I do not have any problem with the idea that consumers want to protect themselves from it. I do object to a so-called solution that has no discernable impact on the culprits but hurts innocent by-standers.

Oh, and by the way, Craig ... my e-mail address is posted on my "Contact" page, which is linked to every page on the site. I am not afraid of the big bad spam.