Comments:

Dear Commissioners, I personally am thankful of your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited bulk e-mail. However, I am concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. There are so many problems and costs associated with this idea, and so much damage done to consumers and businesses alike, that I feel I must urge you to consider this matter most carefully. Requirement of the use of suppression lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications that are available on the net. My specific concern is the harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer before they are added to their lists anyway. They're not who CAN-SPAM was designed to put out of business, but this requirement will very likely have that effect. There's also the potential for significant harm to consumers, because of the problem of properly knowing their intent when they unsubscribe from a list. On top of that, these suppression lists could easily fall into the hands of spammers, leading to more spam instead of less. I was quite surprised after thinking of the potential problems this ruling could involve, and urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation in light of these problems. To me it seems that if the rule was that advertisement e-mail had to be clearly marked in the header that is was an advertisement, Then any e-mail program could easily throw them out if the recipient wanted it that way. The rules of these e-mail programs are so versatile these days that they can actually put them in a separate folder and automatically discard them after a specified period. In conclusion some of us who have very little capitol and run E businesses rely on email as our only economically way for our businesses to advertise and succeed. Thank You Respectfully, Lee Ransom Arizona, USA