Comments:

Dear Commission Members,

I applaude your attempts to can spam. However, your approach seems convoluted in design. The approach ignores some simple facts:

1. The vast majority of the really obnoxious, disgusting emails have no "unsubscribe" button. I once got an email with 20 images depicting (yes, I mean pictures) of females having sex with animals.

I forwarded this email to my ISP (mindspring.com). But alas, although they tried, they could not determine the sender's address.

In this particular email, there was an "unsubscribe" button. When I clicked on it, I got directed to a screen with a "Thank You for Subscribing" message and more pictures, which I will not describe. They were not for human eyes.

So much for your "system". You would not catch these smut kings.

2. You would, on the other hand, hinder legitimate email newsletters from reaching subscribers. Here is what I do:

I offer a newsletter subscription about life style choices on my web site (see below). The newsletter strongly discourages the use of diet pills or crash diets. It encourages giving more thought to engaging in a sport rather than exercise. The newsletter also offers tidbits of information (I am a biochemist.)

When people "unsubscribe", they may have the information they want, they may have grown independent and have advanced to more specialized literature. They may not like what I say about discipline.

Yes, I also advertise on my web site. I need to eat and pay for expenses. I would consider all requests by users as communications with me, the list owner. None of my communications are any regulator's business as long as they are legal. I do not sell subscriber lists.

In summary:Your approach is not practical, it targets the wrong population and does not worry the offenders.

Email accounts exist under the supervision of adults, and there are filters. Supervising children is the domain of parents and teachers, not business. There are dirt and spam filters out there. Let us not turn the whole world into a kindergarten.

An approach that would work:

Do not allow commercial email without valid return address. I know how to program and would know how to get smut kings thrown off their servers by their host companies.

You want to do something for real and for the duration? Make sure that all commercial email comes from registered email addresses. People could then enable a very simple filter. The ISPs could enforce this in a very simple way. All the technology is already there.

The way you go about regulations will only encourage obnoxious marketers. Unenforcable rules are counterproductive.

Don't talk about "voluntary compliance". Have you ever been "asked" by a policeman whether you would "consider" driving by the rules? This kind of nonsense makes regulators look and sound like kindergarten teachers.

My two cents worth,

Ursula Czichi
*REDACTED PERSONAL INFORMATION* 
http://escale.home.mindspring.com/A_letter4u.html