Comments:

RE:CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 I do not think that original senders of commercial email messages, whether they suggest that the recipients forward the message to a friend or not, should be responsible for what the recipients do. A publisher would have no control over what the original (or future) recipients would do and should, therefore, not be responsible for this behavior. The second issue listed--whether several entities or persons simultaneously could be considered the sender--would not only be a violation of the publishers privacy issues, but it would also be particularly burdensome on a publisher to have to "merge and purge" all of the email lists for every advertiser, which might mean keeping several databases. For instance, Subscriber A wants to hear from me, but doesn't want to hear from Advertiser X. Subscriber B wants to hear from me, Advertiser X and Y, but doesn't want to hear from Advertiser Z. I'm sure you can see that this would be unbelievably costly and time-consuming for a business owner. Regarding the privacy issue, as a publisher, I would not make my email list available to my advertisers. I have vowed to keep this information private for my subscribers. My advertisers have done the same with their subscribers. The only logical way to avoid sending an email to someone who requested removal on one or more of the publisher's and advertisers' lists would be to merge and purge the list, removing those who have specifically requested to get email from the publisher or the advertiser simply because they asked to be removed from ONE list. This means that though my subscriber asked to receive email from me, I could not send it because one advertiser is on this subscriber's "do not email" list. I'm sure my subscriber would be angry about not receiving the information they requested. There's no way as a small publisher that I could possibly do this without undue, burdensome costs and/or violating the privacy of subscribers. Regarding the third issue--the question of whether a post office box or commercial mail drop constitutes a valid address--I say, "Yes, of course." If the business receives mail at that address, then the address is a valid address. Many, many small publishers work from home offices. It's very likely that they would not feel comfortable revealing their home address in a commercial email. This gives the publisher a right to privacy while also allowing the recipient of the email to use the US mail to contact the publisher.