Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, While your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited bulk email are a step toward a solution, I am concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain and share suppression lists. There are so many problems and costs associated with the idea of maintaining and making suppression lists available to advertising partners that there is the potential for greater damage to consumers and businesses alike than was found prior to CAN-SPAM, 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 available on the net. My specific concerns are for harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to adding them to any list, and with the sharing of suppression lists with other entities. CAN-SPAM was designed to put those who routinely use Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (UCE) as a prospecting device out of business, but this requirement will very likely have the effect only of penalizing legitimate businesses, including small home-based entities that cannot afford to maintain sophisticated subscription technologies. 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. Sometimes, consumers unsubscribe from one list maintained by a company, but not all. A prohibition on sharing any data with a third party is a cornerstone of the privacy policy on many legitimate marketer's Web sites. Not only does sharing suppression lists violate that extremely customer-friendly policy, if shared for any purpose, these suppression lists could easily fall into the hands of spammers, leading to more spam instead of less. Additionally, legitimate marketers must be protected from the potential for being held liable for messages forwarded by recipients. There is no feasible way that any sender can control the actions recipients take in forwarding e-mail messages. Given that the potential problems that implementation of this ruling could could have, including the effect of creating a situation that is virtually opposite the intent of its implementation, and its deletorious effect on small business development, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation as written in light of these problems. Respectfully, Susan Heywood Phoenix, AZ, USA