Comment Number: OL-100041
Received: 3/12/2004 12:34:52 AM
Organization:
Commenter: Maneesh Pangasa
State: AZ
Agency: Federal Trade Commission
Rule: CAN-SPAM ANPR
Docket ID: [3084-AA96]
No Attachments

Comments:

First of all, I think you should shorten some of these questions and make them more understandable. Some of them I didn't understand and had to guess on. Second I am very sad the CAN SPAM ACT was passed It is a very weak federal law which tells millions of spammers they can continue to spam as long as their unsolicited commercial emails are not fraudulent. The mentioning of an opt-out system in the CAN SPAM ACT is good but dictating the existence of a nationalized one is no good. Third, the American people need the power to sue spammers directly. CAN SPAM forbids them from doing that and only says big businesses and organizations can do so. This is a major blow to Americans. Worse regarding the CAN SPAM Act's opt-out provision it does not state how the opt-out system should work. What we need is an opt-in system so marketers can only send mail to people who have asked for it. Spammers lie about opt-out systems too. A Do Not Spam Registry would be great. However, do note that this law tells every American they have to respond to senders of every message they do not want to recieve by the millions, and must opt-out of each list to stop spammer might have a different type of opt-out system which complicates matters even more. This law is weak, and ineffective because it only regulates spam instead of banning it. The Congress was supposed to be on our side, now the only way to stop spam is thru the use of technology and reporting. A valid Postal Address in the message should be considered acceptable under any federal law like CAN SPAM that deals with spam. However, even if one is not commiting fraud it is still wrong to spam and these spammers must be punished for sending it in the first place whether or not it is fraudulent. Companies like OfferMagnet.com deserve to be punished under the fullest extent possible under law to discourage them from sending any spam (http://www.offermagnet.com). The same applies to companies like United Marketing Strategies which according to www.senderbase.org controls/manages the domain www.offersonthenet.com.