| Comment Number: | OL-100009 |
| Received: | 8/15/2004 10:10:01 AM |
| Organization: | A Citizen of the United States |
| Commenter: | Stephen Satchell |
| State: | NV |
| Agency: | Federal Trade Commission |
| Rule: | Definitions, Implementation, and Reporting Requirements Under the CAN-SPAM Act (NPRM) |
| Docket ID: | [3084-AA96] |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
A piece of e-mail is commercial if it contains any commercial content. This would include mailpieces containing advertisements of sponsors in political messages, advertisements in newsletters, and similar non-transactional pleas for money or goods. Specifically exempted are bills for organization dues and cost data (such as conference or seminar fees) when it can be reasonably taken as part of the information content. For mailpieces with commercial content, the test for UBE (UCE) would apply: did the recepient give permission for that particular sender? Yes, the proposed ``primary purpose'' criteria should include an element expressly providing that a message may be deemed to have a commercial primary purpose if the message creates a false ``net impression'' that the message is noncommercial because it is deliberately structured to do so. The "structure" criterion should be part of the criteria used to ascertain the principle purpose of the mailpiece. In closing this short comment, I want to point out the obvious: spam is more than just commercial messages. Spam is not about content, it's about consent. The fact that the FTC is the US government organization tasked with controlling spam puts a commercial-message bias on the total problem. Agreed, most spam has a commercial intent, but that's not the total picture. Thank you for reading this.