Comments:

Re: CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 To the Commissioners, I encourage your efforts to curb unsolicited bulk email. I am however very concerned about the proposed requirement for merchants to maintain suppression lists. The costs and infrastructure of creating and maintaining these lists will seriously restrict small Internet businesses, like mine, to compete with large well funded companies and worse spammers that have simply moved offshore. I urge you to reconsider this matter carefully before implementing the CAN-SPAM act as it is currently written. Requirieing of the use of suppression lists will seriously damage many of the small 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 the 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 very surprised at the potential problems created by the proposed act, and urge you in the strongest possible terms to restructure its implementation in light of these problems, Respectfully, Gary L Scott Beaverton, OR USA