Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, Thank you for your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited commercial email. As someone who is trying to get an Ezine and other Opt-in email information and marketing programs started, I am glad to see an attempt to control those who DO NOT get permission before emailing commercial email. However, I am concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. There are many, many problems and costs associated with this idea, with a lot of potential damage that could be done both to consumers and businesses alike, that I feel I must urge you to consider this matter very 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. Permission based emailers are not the ones who CAN-SPAM was designed to put out of business, but this requirement may 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. I strongly believe that the implementation of this ruling WILL NOT eliminate the true spammers who have caused all of the problems as they are NOT permission based emailers in the first place. They seem to have no regard for their recipients privacy and will only find ways to move their operations offshore to some country where the government officials will not cooperate with the U.S. as long as the bribes and grafts are lucrative. Respectfully, Les Doyle St Peters MO USA