I might not be able to help you with the wording of legislation. I'm just a financial planner, not a lawyer. However, in our business a referral is a very precious thing. We work hard to be able to ask our clients to provide us with referrals. The preferred method of communicating with this new client is through e-mail. Letters are fine, the telephone is fine, but e-mail is more and more the way to go.
If this law passes along, coming up with new clients will become a rather creative affair and we'll have to resort to strategies from a generation or two ago. In other words, I think there'll be a resurgence in Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, and social networking groups that rely on face-to-face meetings and rubber chicken dinners, as opposed to meeting online, which is how a lot of people work these days.
I simply suggest that banning all e-mails to a third party that is unknown might be pushing it a bit too far, but a one-on-one referral--as opposed to a client who has 14 million contacts--might be a bit further. In our business, and as it relates to my own business as a self-employed person with five people on staff, we treasure referrals. We want to be able to get to these people any way possible. E-mail is becoming more and more the preferred method of choice by both us and the people who are being referred. We'd be grateful if we could keep using that method.