Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, like many people I hate receiving unsolicited bulk email, and agree that something needs to be done to curb it. However, as a legitimate online merchant publishing email newsletters, I am very concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. Taking my own fully online business as an example. It has the potential to close me down. I work from a home office and employ one other person full time, plus two others part time to publish a weekly double opt-in newsletter which reviews software and books for people running home and small businesses. I frequently link to 7 or 8 different books in one newsletter. Suggesting people go to online bookstores like Amazon and Barns and Noble to purchase the books. I use what are called affiliate links, so that when people buy the book from Amazon I get a referal commission. Amazon's whole business model is based on this affiliate referal model. If the supression list comes into being does that mean I can no longer put a link to an Amazon book in my newsletter because one person out of 16,000 subscribers has asked Amazon not to email them? I'm not sure how this could be made workable. I would have to stop publishing and put people out of work. There are so many problems and costs associated with this idea, and so much damage done to consumers and businesses alike, that I feel I must urge you to consider this matter most carefully. Requirement of the use of suppression lists will seriously damage many of the legitimate publications available on the net. My specific concern is for harm to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to adding them to any list. They're not who CAN-SPAM was designed to put out of business, but this requirement will very likely have that effect. There's also the potential for significant harm to consumers, because of the problem of properly knowing their intent when they unsubscribe from a list. On top of that, these suppression lists could easily fall into the hands of spammers, leading to more spam instead of less. I was quite surprised at the potential problems this ruling could involve, and urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider its implementation in light of these problems, yours sincerely Phil Wiley, Wiley Media Group, Australia Your State and Country