From: Joseph K. Cook |
Dear Madam or Sir: Pink Sheets LLC has provided a compelling case from an investor/broker perspective to control spam emails and unsolicited faxes. Legitimate investors may be discouraged from investing in a small company that has a product, an idea a service which may well succeed in the marketplace. Small businesses today form an integral segment of US commerce because, among other reasons, they can often provide a service, product or consultation at a price substantially less than larger companies. As the owner of two small businesses for over 12 years I can well speak to that issue. Central to success as a small business is reputation. A small company, which is the substance of Pink Sheets' petition, is severly handicapped by having its reputation become dogerel through spam email - the message may be legitimate but the messenger is not. In short, the "I smell a rat" syndrome bedevils smart investment. Unsolicited faxes and spam email cost my companies well over $100 per year. Fax machines require paper and in our case ink as for commercial reasons we use inkjet printers. In the last 24 hours we received one unsolicited fax and twelve spam emails over half of which were the Pink Sheet literature for the same company. These spam emails have to be erased by someone - with multiple computers this 'some one' becomes 'people'. Do some simple arithmetic here with a follow the money methodology. Whoever is sending the spam email is not doing it for a hobby but for money. A brief possibility: a company acquires OTC stock in said company looking for a return through bidding up of the stock for costs and profit. The success rate of spam email might be as high as 1 in 1000 probably more like 1 in 10,000. To effect 300 investors to buy, not inquire further, the 'whoever' would need to mathematically send 2.5 million spam emails; going with the 1 in 10,000 success rate this becomes 25 million spam emails for each OTC issue they hawk. Can you see that this is a problem? If this were a 'dead cat in your mailbox' solicitation -a dead cat in your mail box with a 'Support the SPCA tag', you would be moved to fix the problem. Please take notice that the cost, nuisance and invasion of privacy are issues relevant here that the guardians of this country, which are the SEC, FTC, FCC etc. are charged with addressing. Regards, Joseph K. Cook |