December 19, 2005
My comments below relate to the proposal to provide proxy materials via Email.
Please include specific provisions protecting the shareholders Email address. A company should be prohibited from using the Email address for ANY other purpose. If I provide my Email address to a company for purposes of a proxy, I want to be assurred that I will not start getting sales promotion Emails, or so called informative Emails that are simply disguised advertisiments. There should be no opt out or opt in options. If a company wants to use my Email for any purpose other than mailing proxies, they should not be permitted to unless it is given to them by me completely independently of the means they use to acquire my Email for purposes of the proxy.
A company should be prohibited from selling any Email addresses or sharing them with anyother department within their company. If it is necessary to give the Email address to anyone other entity for purposes of sending out a proxy, there should be a prerequisite requirement that the subsequent entity agrees in writing with the company that the Email address will not be used for any other purpose.
These shareholder protections should be written into the rule as a condition precedent to any company wanting to use Email addresses for proxies. Finally, there should be an effective shareholder remedy available should these shareholder protections be violated.