Comments:

Re; CAN-SPAM Act Rulemaking, Project No. R411008 From: S G A Fetherstonhaugh Borfa Hafod Tregynon Powys UK *REDACTED PERSONAL INFORMATION* Dear Commissioners, It has come to my attention that the commision is suggesting that merchants and businesses maintain suppression lists. Now I think we all agree that the efforts to control unsolicited bulk mail is both neccesary and to be congratulated. However there are so many problems and costs connected with the idea of suppresion lists and they could do so much damage to both consumers and businesses that I feel that this must be considered very carefully. Three points you might consider are: 1) This will have little impact on the real sources of Spam, because they will just find ways of not having to implement the suppression lists, possibly by moving out of the USA's jurisdiction for instance. (Personally my email accounts are full of Spam, most of which is clearly using automatically generated email addresses,(yahoo etc) often promoting pornographic websites which may not even be hosted in the USA, or pharmaceuticals which are also often not USA based. etc) 2) The real people who will be negatively affected are bona fida businesses who are likely to be put out of business by such a system. Plus their many affiliates. The net result could be a devastating negative affect on Internet busineses as a whole. (Opt-in email newsletters to their clients being, for many, one of the most important and critical parts of their business) Most of these businesses already have stricted Spam policies already in place and really should not be penalised. (Consider, of approximately 298 emails I received just the other day in 3 different email accounts 284 were unsolicited (this is not untypical). 14 where from bona fida businesses that I had requested information from. And some of whom I have bought products from. Why would I (or anyone) want to penalise them when they protect my privacy and I have only ever received useful or product information from them?) 3) Because this is a policy that is being enacted in the USA, this negative affect will largely cause problems for American businesses leaving the field wide open to the rest of the world, which is rapidly becoming highly internet literate, as no such direct laws could (at the moment) be applied to them. Therefore we can see that the requirement of the use suppression list will seriously damage many legitmate publications. There is little doubt that serious harm will be done to publishers who require permission from the consumer prior to being added to any list. Really these bona fida businesses are not the people that CAN-SPAM was meant to stop and put out of business but these proposals in my opinion will cause irreputable harm to many honest internet businesses. (In case this isn't clear, opt-in email communication with their customers is often the keystone of their internet business.) It is also difficult to see how these suppresion list will really be of benefit to the public or the consumer, as genuine businesses are usually very responsive in removing people who wish to unsubscribe immedately a request is received. It's pretty obvious to any real business that there is no point in chasing somebody who doesn't want your service or product, and it definitely isn't cost effective! (The truth of the matter is that it only makes sense in economic terms if some one was to mail millions of email addresses on the off chance that a small percentage will respond,................ ie SPAM, which is presumably why the unscrupulous do it!) There are are in my opinion many other problems associated with these proposals, not least the suppression lists themselves falling into the hands of spammers, or even being set up just to harvest email addresses by unscrupulous persons unknown. To finish, it seems that the potential problems that this proposal will have really out way its usefulness. So I repectfully urge you to take great care in considering this and the potential harm it could do. Yours sincerely S G A Fetherstonhaugh United Kingdom