Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I completely agree that we need to address unsolicited commercial bulk email. However, I believe some of the solutions proposed are extremely bad policy, and are bad ideas. Please re-consider some of these ideas, as they incur incredible cost and problems for legitimate businesses. The use of suppression lists are not a good idea. It is one thing to opt out of a list from company X; it is quite another to have a relationship with company Y whose newsletter is of value to you and have company Y use advertising from company X. This type of advertising is not "spamming" or harming anyone. Yet making this illegal will be so extremely problematic for small companies to enforce, that this ruling could close down these legitimate companies at worst and close down their useful, desired, and absolutely legitimate newsletters at the very least. These companies and these email publications are NOT the targets of CAN-SPAM but will be the ones that CAN-SPAM puts out of business. There's also the potential for significant harm to consumers, because they will quite likely not be aware of what information they really do want, that they no longer will be able to receive, when they unsubscribe from a list. Regarding the national "do not mail" registry: I strongly propose this exception - if someone places themselves on this registry but has explicitly asked to be on a newsletter list either before or after placing themselves on this registry - the burden would HAVE to fall on the person to remove themselves from any such lists they have explicitly asked to be on. For small business such as mine to try to compare and extract my double-opt-in subscriber list to another list before each newsletter would mean the cancellation of my newsletter. I don't have the manpower to do this. I rely on the fact that my subscribers have requested - twice - to be on my newsletter list, and have not unsubscribe. It would also mean consumers would not be able to receive information they have explicitly asked for. I don't think this is the intent. I strongly urge you to make this a provision! Also, on the subject of newsletter forwarding: I DO believe it is very wrong to subscribe someone else to a newsletter. On the other hand, I do request that my newsletter subscribers forward to their friends if they feel their friends will benefit. It happens perhaps ten or less times a newsletter according to my statistics. This is a once-and-done personal email with nothing to opt-out of. Those who get the newsletter who then wish to subscribe, can do so. If not, that is fine too. Why regulate the personal forwarding of information from friend to friend? If a company is pressuring/encouraging this type of forwarding, then hopefully a consumer could see through this type of poor marketing, as could their friend - but it still would be a personal choice. Regarding the purpose of a commercial email - this can be a bit "gray". I write my newsletter for the same reason I am a coach - I like to help people with good information. It is an informational newsletter. I don't strongly push my services, but hopefully if people like what they see month after month, some of them may wish to use my services. So is it commercial mailing? Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, but not in any direct sense. But I would write it if there was no hope of anyone ever using my services because I love to put good information out there, so in way it is not as well. Again, please reconsider some of these provisions. Respectfully, Kay Grames Indiana, USA