Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I appreciate your efforts to minimize the problems associated with bulk email, and I agree that businesses should not be allowed to abuse this valuable mode of mass communication. However, I'm concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. There are many complications and costs associated with this proposal, and I foresee significant negative side affects to consumers and businesses alike. Please consider this matter very carefully. Requirement of the use of suppression lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications available on the Net. Legitimate, law abiding and ethical email marketers are not who CAN-SPAM was designed to eliminate, but this unnecessary requirement will hurt them most. There's also the potential for significant harm to consumers because of confusion created when they request removal from one list but are subsequently removed from ALL lists. Do consumers not have the right to choose who can send them information and who can't? Additionally, these suppression lists could easily fall into the hands of spammers, leading to more spam instead of less. The potential problems this ruling will cause are very serious and ultimately more detrimental to the growth of U.S. businesses more than anything else. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation in light of the problems discussed above. Why not just educate the Internet using public not to share their email addresses with businesses if they don't wish to get email and why not encourage research and development of new technologies to assist with management of the flow of unwanted messages? Respectfully, Craig Lilienthal, M.S. Florida, USA