Slashdot Mirror
U.S. National Do-Not-Call Registry is Law
extra88 writes "Bush has signed the
Do-Not-Call Registry into law. The registry will be run by the FTC and funded by fees collected from telemarketers. Telemarketers can be fined up to $11K for calling someone on the list. Politicians, surveys (loophole?) and charities are exempt from using the list. The FCC oversees certain industries (airlines, banks and phone companies) and will have to "buy in" to the registry for it to affect those industries. Slashdot covered this story when the bill went through House of Representatives."
Why are surveys and charities exempt? They're no less annoying, and have no right to call you out of the blue either.
bkr
How the hell would I prove that a telemarketer called me? Is it my word against their word? Do I obtain phone records? Does the government obtain phone records? Now granted, my cell phone does a pretty good job of breaking calls down to incoming and outgoing, but I don't recall if it tells you the phone number of the incoming call on the bill Seems like yet another political feel good move that the government has no way of enforcing. Hey if it works and the iron the kinks out, then sign me up! Hell lets figure out how to do the same thing as spammers, since I think that cause more pain and cost more money.
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
How would you enforce it? I assume that most of my unsolicited telephone calls come from within the US, and are therefore subject to US laws.
The callers could move outside the US, but the cost of making the phone calls would increase dramatically.
However, it's easy for spammers to move outside the US to avoid an unfavorable law, and doesn't really change their costs much.
"Telemarketers say the registry will devastate their business."
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If anything, a do not call list would help them reduce the costs by eliminating unnecessary phone calls. The people who sign up for this list are those who are least likely to purchase anything through a telemarketer. Now that they have a list of numbers not likely to buy anything, they can skip over that and save the cost of a phone call.
Thanks for making up my mind for me. I'd rather evaluate the merits of receiving telephone solicitations and make the decision to sign up on a do-not-call list myself, and I'm sure there are millions of others who agree.
And just so you know, some people LIKE to receive telemarketing calls, credit card offers, etc. Maybe they're lonely. Maybe they need toilet paper. It doesn't matter. If you sign me up for something that I didn't ask for, you are violating my privacy just as much as the guy who calls me in the middle of dinner.