Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I am a person of quite modest means attempting to augment my income via online business. I practice “permission marketing” in which only people who are interested in or have inquired about my products or services receive communications from me. Email is a vital component of my business. Via email, interested people are provided information and/or directed to informative web sites. I also publish a free bi-weekly newsletter, delivered via email, that provides information of interest to my subscribers and promotes my business. Subscribers must intentionally subscribe to my newsletter and that is the only way anyone can receive it. It seems to me that such people as me suffer the most from genuine SPAM. You see, because my email address may be found on my web sites, in my advertisements, and similar legitimate sources, my email address is very likely to be illegally “harvested” more so than people without any online business presence. I mention these basics about myself because I support your efforts to curb the problem of unsolicited bulk email. I am very concerned, however, about the proposed requirement for merchants (which would include me) to maintain suppression lists. I feel I must urge you to consider this matter cautiously. It seems to me there are too many complications that could result in unintended harm. Do not throw out the baby with the bath water! Required suppression lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications on the Internet. I am concerned particularly about harm to publishers, such as myself, who require permission from consumers before to adding them to a list. We honest, ethical, legitimate business people are not those CAN-SPAM was designed to put out of business – but this requirement may result in that. Consumers may be harmed because of the complication of rightly knowing their intent when they unsubscribe from a list. A consumer may wish to unsubscribe from one of my lists but not another, not knowing that there may be only one list, thus no longer be able to receive information about something they actually are interested in. Further, a suppression list may fall into the hands of spammers. The more I studied, the more I became concerned over the potential problems – particularly unintended problems - this ruling could involve. Please reconsider the implementation of this measure until all such issues are adequately addressed. Respectfully, Cephas Williamson Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA *REDACTED PERSONAL INFORMATION*