Let's be very clear here, receiving the newsletter is ultimately your decision. When you originally created your account one of the boxes says "receive e-mails from administrators", this is checked by default but should it be unchecked you will receive no e-mails, period. Secondly, we understand that some people want to receive e-mails like thread notifications but not the newsletter, hence we added the option to remove yourself from the newsletter only. The newsletter has always been a part of our site although we haven't used it much in recent times. On the bottom of every newsletter we clearly explain that this list can be unsubscribed from not once but twice. We also have a thread explaining it in both this forum and the news forum along with a detailed tos item explaining your subscription options step-by-step.
As far as the commercial impact of this email -- it is a content reminder, not an ad packed spam message. The only items that I see that could be considered as "ads" is the image promoting the free contest we have going on now and a text blurb about a trip we are holding later this year. Beyond those items everything else links to an article, a thread or a free feature. That's as much advertising as you will see in our newsletter and as far as I can tell, it is very, very minor and pretty well marked.
Clearly not everyone wants to receive e-mails from ScubaBoard and not everyone wants the newsletter. This is why we have gone to such lengths to allow people to opt-out. Why didn't we make it an opt-in list? Actually, we did. We figured people signing up were opt-ing in and so long as we provide ways to easily opt-out it seemed fair to us. Thousands of people have chosen to opt out and don't receive a newsletter or any e-mails, again, depending on their preferences. Your right to privacy and to Email privacy is something we take very, very seriously and that's why we have made removing yourself from our Emil system as easy and as painless as we could. I apologize if you received any messages you did not like and I invite you to remove the "receive Emil from administrators" box to insure you never, ever, ever receive an Email again.