Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I don't really care for your questionaire. It's based on the "When did you stop beating your wife?" scenario. Many of your questions have no good answer. As a domain owner who receives an average of 250 unsolicited and pornographic e-mails daily, I do applaud your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited bulk email. However, I am deeply concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. Furthermore, the idea of restricting forward to friend forms is utterly ridiculous. The assumption here is that an individual who visits your website has a particular friend or friends who will want to hear what you have to offer - that amounts to a personal e-mail to a friend, and nothing you should be concerned about regulating - or reading, for that matter. It is one thing to try to stop offensive and unwelcome Viagra ads coming from overseas, and quite another to stop commerce on the Net. There are so many problems and costs associated with this Act, 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 available on the net. My specific concern is for harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to adding them to any list. 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 at the potential problems this ruling could involve, and urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation in light of these problems, Respectfully, Kathryn A. Graham Texas, USA