Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, Thank you for your efforts to control spam email. Please consider my comments before revising Can Spam Act. Due to many factors a lot of us are turning to the internet to start a small business to earn much needed extra income. Your new spam act has many worried that in to effort to control spam the legitimate business email will become be labeled spam and fined and not the email that is really the problem. I receive a lot of email and it has been my experience that honest people and legitimate businesses will honor my removal request. The one exception is for those trying to promote something x rated. One of my major concerns as someone who does business online is that the email suppression list will put good businesses out of business. This type of requirement would not stop spam as those people that already send that are using illegal means to start with. They are not going to stop just because you pass a new law. A store in your local mall doesn’t look at customer A that is coming in and say quick roll the racks that contain vender xyz into the back room they don’t want to see that line of clothing. Then turn around and have to put another line in the back for customer B. The store would not be able to stay in business. Customer A may not like vender xyz so they go over to the one they do like and ignore the other one. They are not offended at it they just pay no attention to it. Sending out email to ones email list that has asked to be on the list works the same way. One person may not be interested in the topic of the first email but may buy the product in the next email. Email I don’t want to read or a product I am not interested in I delete and don’t get upset. Now getting 1000+ copies of the exact same email from the same person in the same day does annoy me but not one email or even the same offer by another person. When someone asks to be removed from your list it is impossible to tell why they want off the list. It could be they like another publication that presents things in a way they like better. Maybe they are on two lists that cover the same material and they don’t have time to read both.... This is just one reason why a suppression list would not work. Also people on the suppression list would not like their information passed form one person or business to the next. What about privacy issues not to mention the costs to keep up with all the different suppression lists? This would shut businesses down. Many families are wanting a way to make extra money to provide for their loved ones. Please keep this in mind when you are writing your new laws. We are the ones that need to still have the freedom to conduct business online and email is a big part of that. It shuts down businesses when everyone is afraid of sending an email in case they are going to be fined. The ones that are abusing the system are going to any way. These types of people still run scams by telephone and postal mail even though that is illegal too. Please take the time to understand how small online businesses are using email to run their businesses to stay in touch with potential customers so you don’t make a law that ties the hands of the good guy and lets the bad guy go free. Thank you for your consideration.