Comments:

I wish to express my support of the report submitted to you by the International Council of Online Professionals (iCop). I would also like to bring to your attention the following points made by iCop to illustrate that emails sent by legitimate marketers that follow the rules suggested by iCop should be labelled as "Transactional Email" and NOT as "Commercial Email": - Legitimate marketers use some kind of opt-in/opt-out for their publications and lists - Therefore, legitimate marketers are NOT sending spam - This being true, their publications should NOT be labelled with the same terminology as the spammers, i.e., "commercial email" - The CAN-SPAM Act, as it was written, ONLY requires opt-out procedures for anyone sending "commercial email." - We've already been given two related terms that could exempt legitimate marketers from the category of "commercial," i.e., "relationship email" and "transactional email" - When a person specifically requests to receive a publication, or company updates of any kind, it IS a requested transaction - Suppression lists are only suggested for those sending "commercial" email - Having opt-in/opt-out lists fall under the term "transactional email" would automatically make suppression lists a moot point - Suppression lists would be used for those who don't use affirmative consent opt-in, in addition to the opt-out process - This would not affect the transactional email of legitimate marketers and publishers, but only those who are sending unrequested email - The ISSUE is: Who falls under the regulations? - Asking to have affirmative consent opt-in (with the ability for subscribers to opt-out) written into the FTC regulations as a condition for a different label, i.e., transactional email - would eliminate the issue of suppression lists for legitimate marketers - The FTC does NOT want to put legitimate marketers out of business - They DO want the spammers gone - It can all be done in the labeling, and everybody's happy These points just made so much sense to me and I hope that they can be seriously considered when making any changes to the CAN-SPAM regulations. Yours sincerely, Deborah Figg