| Comment Number: | 522418-02249 |
| Received: | 6/15/2006 3:01:59 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | David Schwartz |
| State: | AZ |
| Subject: | Business Opportunity Rule |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 437 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
While I applaud the attempts to reduce fraud, there are some provisions of this that I don't like. 1) I'm curious if all of the additional paperwork that's required complies with the Federal Paperwork Reduction Act. 2) How can an agency of the Federal Government pass or enforce a law that requires privately held companies and business owners to disclose sales, customers, and financial information that for any other purpose are considered confidential and off-limits to non-public entities? Even the IRS cannot compel anybody to disclose the information that this proposed rule is requiring without first obtaining a court order. 3) This rule would seem to invalidate all efforts on the part of Congress to keep private customer contact and financial data PRIVATE! Scammers will start buying stolen databases and publishing them just to give an aire of legitimacy to their efforts. If they're already committed to perpetrating a fraud, what's going to keep them from perpetrating two or three in the process? 4) It's one thing to publish the names of "johns" arrested with prostitutes, since the prostitutes are presumed to be committing a crime. But requiring the publication of detailed information of customers under the guise of preventing them from being defrauded is surely going to induce a GREATER likelihood of them being defrauded by OTHERS! Neither the promoter(s) nor the customers are presumed to be engaged in a criminal act, and establishing a law that criminalizes the failure to disclose PRIVATE INFORMATION taken in confidence cannot be constitutionally sound. 5) As someone who would be affected on both sides of this rule, I think it's unworkable, unsound, and ultimately would decimate most small businesses. Small businesses account for the majority of new jobs being created. They grow by selling BENEFITS. Most of these BENEFITS are financial in nature. Requiring them to disclose customer details to the extent proposed here would effectively put them out of business, as most customers would not purchase anything if they knew their business dealings were going to become a matter of public record. 6) this should properly be called the "Annhialate Small Businesses and Personal Privacy Act".