I don't know if it's illegal. I do know that it's perfectly moral. I mean, it's just email... It's not like I'm tricking people into giving me money...
I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
But if it is a joke site it's attempting to parody bad marketers and they are viciously stupid and thus your parody is indistinguishable from stuff they actually do.
Project Gutenberg started when Michael Hart tried to email copies of the American Declaration of Independence to everyone on his local network; they were not amused and so he set up a website instead.
The first commercial email spam was probably the DEC spam to all Arpanet. http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html
If you do not have a confirmed, opt-in, agreement with people you're sending bulk email to you need to be very careful or you risk losing internet connectivity. You're not warning your customers about that.
You're also violating parts of Google's tos. Lucky for you Google refuse to take any form of contact from the outside world so your service will survive until someone there notices it.
In the U.S., unless you have a business relationship with the recipients, it's both illegal and immoral. It violates the U.S. federal Can-Spam Act.
> I think responses in this thread are somewhat lacking a sense of humor
I want to see the smile on your face when you're arrested for providing an easy way to violate the law en masse.