Comments:

Gentlemen: I am writing regarding your Rulemaking, CAN-SPAM Act, Project R411008. I operate a web site that is geared to recommend the best value microscopes for collectors of coins, minerals, and stamps. Since the 70's I have been serving collectors and I am a life member of many national numismatic organizations. Collectors come to me weekly if not daily for advice. It is also a firm practice in our business line to accept a commission for referred clients. I am being compensated for the knowledge and research I do to find the best match between the company and the collector much like a consultant might be compensated. Please feel free to look at my new website: www.microscopes-for-collectors.com It is a new site, one of two that I have, and I am now expanding it to include Google AdSense. Soon I hope to add affiliate links to other hobby sites for collectors to visit to satisfy their hobby needs that I cannot fill. For example I do not handle supplies that students using our microscope may need for projects. I do not handle cameras that many want to attach to their microscopes to take pictures or images. It seems to me that the CAN-SPAM Act would require that I would become responsible for the business practices of all these fine supply houses, should this law be interpreted in a way I am sure Congress never imagined. While I do not receive all or even a majority of my income from referrals, I cannot believe that Congress wants me to be responsible for all my colleagues and their companies, if a client of mine whom I have referred to in a happy transaction for the collector decides to unsubscribe from my own newsletter. If I understand correctly, if my client unsubscribes from my newsletter which contains a link to another business, then I must try to insure that their name is swiftly removed from the newsletter mailing list of the other business as well. Moreover, they may be unsubscribed from the other company's newsletter against their will, since they may be delighted with the other company's products. The effect will not be too profound in my case. It will just ensure that my company can't grow nearly as fast. But this new law, if used against the affiliate industry, will be devastating. The affiliate business' main specialty is information. It is helping an eager seeker of information or a product come to the internet, sort the information, and find the ideal information. This information is spread by search engines and by newsletters that are subscribed to. The effect of the new law may be to punish or even banish altogether the entire affiliate business, with thousands (10,000's?) of new startup businesses and corporations, an entire industry, completely destroyed. If I am an affiliate, how can I control Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.com? The answer is that I cannot, so my only course is to remove all recommendation of legitimate, respected affiliate companies from my newsletters and from my website. As an user of an affiliate (commission) link, I would be held responsible for some much larger company's actions, companies with tens of thousands of employees in some cases. Destruction of legitimate educational commission, referral, or affiliate business is not what Congress had in mind. I believe they had in mind something that would solve a problem, not wholesale destruction of thousands of legitimate start up businesses. Respectfully, Stephen H Eyer Mt Zion Illinois www.microscopes-for-collectors.com *REDACTED PERSONAL INFORMATION*