Comments:

Commercial advertisemetn shoule be defined as it is in the Telepone consumer Protection Act of 1991. Spoofing should be an aggravated violation. There should not be any "opt-out" requirement. An "opt-out" requirement places the burden on the recipient of opting-out of potentially millions of spam senders. The public wants to be free of spam without having to do anything to be free of this time consuming nuisance. Anything less than requiring spam senders to first obtain "opt-in" permission before sending spam (such as is presently the case for fax advertisements under the TCPA) will not be effective. A private right of action, such as in TCPA, against both the advertiser and the sender (if a commercial spam broadcast service is used) would allow the public to function as private attorney general. A National Do Not Email Registry will aid criminal spammers by providing a list of people owning email boxes which are not clogged with spam, thereby making it more likely that the recipient will actually open and read the advertisement. (Currently, many users delete all items that look like spam before opening and reading the other e-mail messages.) Spam needs to be illegal unless the sender has received the recipient prior express written approval, and the burden needs to be on the sender to prove that it has gotten the recipient's prior express approval.