Raising the Permission Bar.(unsolicited e-mail regulations)(Brief Article)

The good news for the developing e-mail marketing industry is that consumers can already distinguish between legitimate, permission-based commercial e-mail and unsolicited commercial e-mail, according to IMT Strategies Inc., a New York-based sales and marketing research and advisory firm. The bad news is that the study found that marketers have a harder time telling the difference between permission e-mail and spam.

The distinction between the two will soon be enforced:

California law recently defined three types of acceptable e-mail use. Companies can send e