Main purpose of the list: to discuss bass and contrabass instruments, recordings, instruments for sale, relevant concerts, etc. In practice, we cover just about anything related to music.
Please, if possible, send posts in PLAIN ASCII
TEXT.
The list software does not convert html, mime, rtf, or other formats,
and
the resulting mess takes up three times as much space and is difficult
to read. Where possible, I will clean these up before archiving
the digest, but please be considerate of the other subscribers.
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE), and everything else known by the common epithet of "spam" is not welcome on the list, and is specifically prohibited . In my opinion, spam has no legitimate purpose whatsoever, has no justification, and is not even entertaining. All subscribers (and non-subscribers too!) are advised never to reply to spam, and never ever to send money to a spammer. Replying to spam only gives the spammer another email address to use. Sending money to a spammer is throwing your money away. Think about it: they can't even use a legitimate email address, and have to forge email headers to leave their excrement all over the world. Why would you trust someone like this with your credit card number? How would you track them down to complain, when you don't receive the product, or the product you do receive is defective (or just worthless junk)? Much of the email classifiable as spam is fraudulent and/or illegal, and most people are intelligent enough to spot it. All spam addressed to the list itself will be automatically forwarded to the FTC, regardless of how it is routed or what return address it shows in the headers. All spam (especially obvious scams and frauds, and pyramid schemes) is forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is forwarded to the FTC whether it was addressed to the list or to me personally. Frankly, I don't care if you think your spam "complies" with some proposed federal law, or if you provide an "opt-out" address. Just don't send it to me, or to the contrabass list. This website and the contrabass list are administered in California, and are subject to California law. The list is read in a number of different jurisdictions, from Australia to Norway: please do not think that you are complying with the bulk email and advertising regulations of all jurisdictions just by providing a return email address, or an opt-out statement.If you are interested in spam, keep in mind that you can be much more effective by simply buying an ad or two from Doubleclick.com or Yahoo.com: not only do you probably reach many more people, it probably doesn't cost you any more than the spam kit and email list, and doesn't get you booted off a series of ISPs, AND the people who see the ad realize that it is subsidizing the website or email list they're reading and aren't NEARLY as irritated by it.
If you receive email with an invalid reply address, offering you anything, either delete it or report it (see War on Spam and Sam Spade for instructions and tools).
Spam is sent to this list on a daily basis (about 20-30 spams per day, at last count), all of which is filtered out before reaching subscribers.
Please do not forward petitions, virus warnings (even if real), or similar material to the list. So many of these are hoaxes that they are more spam-like than helpful. Most subscribers subscribe to more than one list, and see all that material multiple times already. If you run across a real virus warning, it is best simply to post a link to the Symantec antivirus website for information. (Note: while their virus information is helpful, after dealing with their customer "service" I can't recommend buying any Symantec product.)
Messages regarding bass or contrabass instruments for sale, concerts, recordings, etc. are permitted (even encouraged!), as long as it is relevant to the list subject matter, and isn't too frequent (e.g., don't post piccolos for sale every week).