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House Votes to Launch Do-Not-Call List
Zendar writes "Yahoo! has a story on how it took less than an hour with a final vote of 412-8 to approve the 'do not call list'. "Votes to overturn the judge's order are expected mid-afternoon in both chambers, according to Republican leadership aides." The President is expected to sign today. Some choice quotes: "Fifty million Americans can't be wrong." and "This bill will pass faster than a consumer hanging up on a telemarker at dinner time." CNN also has the story."
Why can't they pass an anti-spam bill as quickly?
Small industry to offend
plus
Lots of voters to please
equals
Lopsided vote
plus
Passage in record time
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I posted my incisive and witty commentary on this matter of vital national importance earlier this afternoon.
While I am on the list and would very much like to see it go through, it irratates me when I hear statements like "Fifty million Americans can't be wrong.".
Popular votes are routinely wrong and a number of them have had horrible consequences.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Several analysts have ponted out that this coud mean milions of lost jobs in an important industry.
Yeah, and laws against murder have thrown millions of hitmen out of work.
While many of us don't like people selling us things we don't like but thats capiatalism you know.
If I want to buy something, I will contact them, or I will leave myself off the list. People on the list have made their decision. They don't want to buy telemarketed crap.
This is slashdot, we don't like capitalism, because we got fired from our dot-com jobs when it turned out that we generated nothing of value. We want all that free stuff back and we want the rich people to pay for it because they aren't giving us free music, are making OS' we don't approve us, and are generally conspiring to keep us down.
Sincerely,
A. Slashbot.
No, of course not. Not like 50 million Americans still believe in frikkin' astrology or anything.
Hell, 25 million Americans still probably believe in Santa Claus. Sure, they're children, but that's really no excuse. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Telemarketing will die because the telemarkers finally managed to make themselves obsolete by increasing their most annoying habits (pre-recorded autodialers, calling during dinner every night) that people had finally just had enough. This will be bad for the economy in the short term in some places where this business thrives, but it's not as devastating as some would have you believe.
Industries form and evaporate all the time, yet the economy survives. Those people that are currently engaged in telemarketing will find some other way to make money, and markets will adapt. The economy didn't implode when the automobile devastated the buggy whip business, and it won't implode due to this either. The real fear is what sort of even more annoying marketing tactics will be invented now that this one is being slapped down.
Anyone want to bet these Congressman have telemarketers in their districts?
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
It's certainly pleasing to see that on at least one issue of national import, our elected reprentatives can all pull together for an effective resolution.
I'm rather disappointed by the negativity that has been heaped on Judge West for his ruling suspending enforcement of the law, though. It's the job of the judiciary to keep the executive branch (in this case, the FTC) from overstepping the bounds of their authority granted to them by the legislative branch. If there was a question as to whether or not Congress granted the FTC sufficient authority to create such a list, enforcement of it certainly should be suspended until the matter is resolved. In this case, Congress (well, the House, anyway) has made itself clear on the matter -- they have explicitly placed the creation and enforcement of the list in the mandate. Unless West does something foolish at this juncture, like continuing to try to fight the enforcement of the list, he should be commended for doing his job of keeping the government consistent.
Funnily enough, in the UK, many people find that most of their spam comes from the USA. If you could kindly get your government to do a similarly fine job on spam, I would get less offers for enlargement of body parts and other tempting offers...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
How long have telephones been around?
Doesn't sound quick to me at all. They aren't passing a bill saying No Telemarketing, they are passing a bill saying the FCC can have a Do Not Call List. BIG DIFFERENCE.
Call the FCC for a Do Not SPAM list.
Fifty million Americans can't be wrong. That's going to be the mantra in Congress for the next two weeks as frantic resolutions are passed authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to implement the proposed National Do Not Call lists. It is ideal legislation; what self-respecting member of Congress is going to vote against those annoying calls at dinner to sell you vacation rentals or offer a credit card.
Ignored in the fracas is a startling truth: The Do-Not-Call list is going to be a failure. It's also an example of the worst sort of government regulation. The two arguments against a Do Not Call list are job loss and the power of marketing. The direct marketing industry has been crying out about potential job losses. Losing two million jobs, many going to low income rural Americans, is a bad thing. And I can believe that the choice direct telemarketing offers (would you like to switch your phone service for 2.9 cents a minute?) helps consumers in the long term. But let's break down why the Do Not Call list is going to fail: Nonprofits, Politicians and Business Process.
The two biggest abusers of telemarketing are politicians and nonprofits. I can't tell you how many times the Virginia State Police Association has called me asking for money. And my phone rings off the hook come election time with Get Out the Vote Calls. These two groups are exempted under the Do Not Call list.
But the exemptions, once created, can only be expanded. Do nonprofits that hire commercials solicitors need apply? What about nonprofits cross-selling commercial products (Greenpeace offering a MBNA Credit card? The NRA offering AT&T phone service). If our intent is to create a zone of privacy, why let in two industries off the bat. And why it may reduce the number of calls, the FTC does not have the staff or expertise to go after the multitude of nonprofit cross selling opportunities which will arise.
I can understand the hypocrisy of politicians removing themselves from the Do No Call regulations, but how is the average American going to react when they get 15 calls to vote for their local congressmen, city council members or Senator come election time. Didn't we sign up for the Do Not Call list, dear? Oh, yes, but Politicians can still call you.
But the biggest weakness, and why the Do-Not-Call act is going to fail, it that it trying to regulate an admirable process (stop telemarketing) but isn't setting out the tools necessary to do so. Let's look at how a telemarketer works. They buy data from a data company - say 15 million records on people who moved recently. They run that through some sorts and come up with 250,000 phone calls they need to make, and then hit the digits.
The national data companies will take the data a few times a year and add a field for people who signed up for Do Not Call. What that means is that if you move, or change phone numbers, it's going to take a while for that information to be updated. And if you name was already sold, say two years ago to a telemarketing firm, how is that company going to find out you where on the Do-Not-call list. Are they going to take their existing data and clean it (which costs money that the companies don't want to spend). And what if you run a business out of your house? Business to business calls are still open, so that means you are still open for calls. There's a hundred other examples of this, and the net result is that a lot of the 50 million Americans who signed up are still going to be gettings calls at 6 pm, and after a long and complicated procedure they are going to find out there's not much you can do. The Do Not Call list is government regulation that ignore business process, and it is going to do very little to stop the calls.
Congress created the FTC, and Congress can change the FTC's mission. Congress explicitedly told the FTC to create the Do-Not-Call list. Hence, they did not stray outside their area.
It has been pointed out that this claim is hyperbole. Most people who work for call banks work for a specific company. For example, a bank which calls its own customers. Such calls are still legal.
But that is laisse faire captialism, which we don't have in this country.
Does that mean we have now voted god into existence?
Does this mean that astrology is real?
Does this mean I can talk to the dead?
Does this mean that Friends is really a good show?
I think not. 50 million people can sometimes be real doofuses.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Funny, but a very good point too. But this does show that when the people are upset enough about something, the government will have to react. The trick is to get enough people to care about the cause that it will make the reps sweat around election time.
Now that the RIAA is going after Joe Sixpack and his family, you are going to see the same kind of backlash against them only in a much faster and more brutal way. Some reps have already come forth looking rather nervous about what the RIAA is doing and some have even given at least lip service to legistlation to stop the RIAA.
With telemarketing, you just got bothered to buy crap and you could hang up. With the RIAA, you get a letter and you have to pay them thousands of dollars or you have to pay a lawyer thousands of dollars to try to get you out of it. Common people will react to that far more vehemantly than they did to telemarketing, just wait, in about six months expect to see a lot of reps and senetors start abandoning the RIAA ship as public antagonism aginst the RIAA and its tactics builds up.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
"Ted Strickland, D-Ohio;"
"Hopefully voters will remember how well the dissenting congressmen "represented" them the next time they go to the polls."
I don't know any of the rest of them but I do know Ted Strickland. Ted Strickland wants to protect peopele's jobs in his area, and yes, there is at least one Telemartking firm located in his district in southeastern Ohio that employs at least 500 people.
Now I have no clue how many of those jobs may or may not be lost by this bill, but the fact is, he is voting to protect those jobs. I personally fail to see how it is some great inconvenience to have telemarketers calling you every so often. Its putting food on someone's table, and is better than them being on welfare. My brother in law worked for the firm for a time. In that impovershed area of the country good paying jobs are hard to come by.
So yes, I think Mr. Strickland represented his area well. He wanted to protect some jobs that some people have, regardless of the slight inconvenience of a few.
It's clear that the F.T.C. has been engaging in regulatory imperialism and ruled outside it's area.
Clear? Outside its area? How so? That is the Federal Trade Commission. It would seem that they are in charge of regulating trade that crosses state lines.
Several analysts have ponted out that this coud mean milions of lost jobs in an important industry.
Boo hoo. No one ever guaranteed that "industry" a profit.
Everyone knows that this could mean the end off telemarketing as an economical way of doing bussiness.
So be it. See above. Let them find a different business model. One that is not so intrusive upon the consumer.
While many of us don't like people selling us things we don't like but thats capiatalism you know.
Capitalism does not include the forcing of your selling mechanism upon me. You can advertise all you want. I have the right not to be bothered with it if I don't want to.
With telephone advertising, there is really no method, short of unplugging the phone, to turn it off. The DNC list provides citizens that method.
Representative government does not mean the will of the majority is neccesarily what is right for everyone. This is more so a case of wanted to make people happy so they will get re-elected, than having any sort of respect for something higher than that.
Rest assured that those who claim to be representing the will of the people are only doing so on their own self-interests, and couldn't give two pence about whether or not you are called during dinner.
Anyway; I would have to say that I am in support of a bill that makes it possible to say "I do not wish to be called by any organization with which I do not already have a standing business association (or is not a newspaper, FOP, fire department, non-for-profit org. or any other number of exemptions)." Really all this does it make it easier for the average person to preemptively tell people to not call them rather than having to ask everyone individually not to call you.
But, my initial point was that a representative government goes beyond majority rule. It is the duty of the majority to protect the minority (perhaps telemarketing employees in this case). I would imagine if our representatives always voted along with what the people they represented wanted that women would probably not have had the right to vote when they did, and slavery would not have been abolished when it was.
I would have greater respect for one of these people who decided not to follow the herd and vote to appease the public; especially if they give a well founded reason for doing so.
What?
Your article only says that 40% believed that only creationism should be taught in public school. It does not say anything about how old they thought the earth is.
i.e. my grandfather has been a deacon in his church for a few decades, he'd probably say that creationism should be taught in schools. That does not allow you to make the *HUGE* jump that he believes the earth is only 6k years old. Let alone your overly massive generlization of a huge population.
Telemarketers can go to hell.
In my experience, having been called by telemarketers an average of 5-10 times a day, and having lived in a town with a great deal of telemarketing corporations, with a great deal of friends who worked at these corporations, I can honestly say I would be absolutely SHOCKED if a single telemarketing firm out there was selling a good product at a reasonable price.
These firms exist solely to fleece unsuspecting invidiuals out of their money by being rude and aggressive on the phone.
May they burn in hell forever, and no, I have litte to no sympathy for the people working these jobs.
It puts food on your table? Great, you just took that money from some old lady on social security who would have otherwise used it to pay for prescription medication, and sold her a crummy product that won't work for more than a few days.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I was about to say - Sounds Like Ron - I like the man
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
The real outcome of this is that the direct marketing industry will realize that they don't spend nearly enough money on Washington lobbyists and campaign contributions (like the tech industry realized after they started getting beaten up by the hill).
Expect a significant increase in spending by the direct marketing industry on lobbyists and campaign contributions. Then, a few years from now, expect several new bills expanding the list of exemptions to the do-not-call list.
Well then, just post your email address and I'll sign you up to make sure a lot of spammers can put food on the table.
Frankly, another person's right to earn a living ends when it invades on my right to privacy.
So what you're saying is that the other 630,500 people in Ohio's 6th district are wrong? Last I recall, the job of the representative is to 'represent' the views of his/her constituency. This seems to fly contrary to that charter.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Millions of lost jobs in an important industry? End of telemarketing as an economical way of doing business?
Millions of lost jobs, yeah tell that to the damned auto-recording that calls my number almost every freaking day, I'm sure that machine's job will be missed. Why not move telemarketers over to call support - about the same thing. Better service is why I cancelled one telco to choose another - at least one telemarketer a week wanting to switch my local but 45 minutes to get support, from the same company... If my number is on the list, it is saving a telemarketer money - I'm not buying so why waste time calling?
Advertising as a whole is a scary business model to build upon. This is just one of many examples where people are just plain sick of it.The year and a half I spent without a land line (all cell) was heaven, I'm ready to go back. Caller ID never worked and neither did "take me off your list, don't call." I'm not going to pay extra for a privacy manager or a private PBX so what am I supposed to do? IMHO telemarketers inflated their own worth and ignored growing anger towards them for at least four years now, so good riddance...
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
With telemarketing, they call you up and harrass you for no reason. The RIAA sues you because you're committing a crime. There's a big difference.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
So yes, I think Mr. Strickland represented his area well. He wanted to protect some jobs that some people have, regardless of the slight inconvenience of a few.
Then anything, any "industry" that generates jobs is a GoodThing? Even if ~1/2 the population of the country does not agree?
Looking at our favorite whipping boy, the RIAA, legislators should protect them at all costs, because to let them break up due to changing technologies and attitudes would be to "lose jobs".
If telemarketing is not working (and it appears it isn't, due to the high number of people who do not want to be called by these people) let the companies find a different model. Employ the same call center people, and no jobs will be lost.
Just because a thing exists and employs people does not make it good, or suitable for protection.
When a bill loses 412 to 8, those remaining votes can almost be considered protest votes. That is to say, they're going on record with a "no" vote to oppose either a piece of pork that got snuck into otherwise popular legislation, or that they think that this is going to be a bad thing for their district... like those who have 1000 people working as telemarketers in their district. I'm not as concerned about the 8 "no" votes because they got washed by 412 votes going the other way. I'm more concerned about the 15 represntatives who didn't bother to show up and take a position on this issue.
Well then, I think we can add this to the Non-Libertarian FAQ. Which incidentally is the first thing on google that shows up when you search for "libertarian faq". I guess that probably means there are less Libertarians than there are people out there who are extremely annoyed by them.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Shouldn't he reflexively vote for anything that increases individual privacy instead?
He's a former Libertarian candidate for President, and reflexively votes against anything that expands government regulation.
This context is important, because this means he very well could be a keeper (the value of having a Constitional defender in Congress shouldn't be underestimated, even if he is annoying).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
As long as I can yell out my window and tell them to turn off their music and they do so, that's fine by me.
I would suggest that TARGETED, AGREED, and WARRANTED solicition will result in a lower-cost of SALES OVERHEAD than currently spamming everyone on the plantet, with the same rate of success!
And you would be wrong. Most of the people who buy from telemarketers are people who aren't assertive enough to just hang up on them, and are easily suckered. They're the same people that fall for high-pressure sales tactics. But they don't like being called either, so the DNC list offers them a way to avoid this situation without having to be rude to anyone.
I haven't said anything until today, but I've gotten annoyed with this whole 50 millions people being on the list thing. There's a lot of bad assumptions around this estimate which could amek the actual number higher or lower.
First of all, you're assuming that each person registered one phone number. Let's assume that each person registered their cell phone, their home phone, their beeper, their fax machine, their dsl line and their office line. That's six lines for a single person. Let's say corporate IBM registered every one of it's office lines, even though the individual's using the lines didn't have any particular problem with telemarketer phone calls. The actual number of people who support this could be much lower than 50 million.
On the other hand, let's say one person registered their house's phone on behalf of an entire family. Now that one phone number should really count for all ten people who live under the roof and use the same line, the actual number of people who support this legislation by that logic could be much higher than 50 million.
And what about people who went stir crazy the day the list was unveiled and started registering every phone number they could get their hands on. Their friends, their coworkers, their family members... they probably thought they were doing everyone a public service. OR, how about if someone set up a script to register a LOT of phone numbers, just to try to put the telemarketers out of business. How hard would it be to automatically register EVERY US phone number? Not very, is the answer.
So, everyone should be saying that 50 million phone numbers were registered, not that 50 million people support the registry. There's really no way to know how popular the registry is without doing (wait for it)... phone surveys.
Sigh.
--
RumorsDaily
It won't. It doesn't stand a chance.
I was an evil one. I used to call you during dinner.
3 days later you had a dude at your house selling you windows, and it costed you $850 a window.
Our business was on the up and up. We didn't break any laws. We confirmed all of our appoitments and kicked old single people off our schedules.
But what always impressed me about the company was there resiliancy.
I see at least two tools they can use to get out from under this.
The first is the polling hole. If politicians are serious about this thing they need to close that hole. They won't do it, cause politicians can't make up there mind without a poll, but the only way to make it work is to close that hole.
'Hello Mr. Smith I am calling on behalf of Windows company.
We are conducting a poll. Does your house have windows?
How many?'
---end of polling portion of call----
See how easy that hole is to exploit?
There is another hole. I can't really think of a way to close this one. But if the consumer is careful they don't have to worry about it.
That one has to do with the customer contacting the business first. If the business can show that the customer contacted them then it really isn't the kind of telemarketing call that this 'do not call' registry covers.
I know what you are thinking.
And you are wrong.
There is nothing new about this hole, or the exploit.
All you have to do is offer a 'free' drawing.
When will people learn that only 'nothing' is free?
We used to set up kiosk stands in malls, fairs, home shows and just about anywhere else we could find to put them. We would put up a couple samples of windows and offer a free drawing for windows.
It was on the up and up we did give away free windows just like we said.
But once you fill out that card, guess what you have done?
You got it. You have now made a contact with our business. You have given us permission to call you.
Even if I am wrong on this, I am not very wrong. All these cards have small print (think EULA) on the back. All that really needs to be done is add a sentence that says 'by filling out this card homeowner gives permission to window company to make farther contact and phone calls to the homeowner.'.
I will be quite honest with you. I don't do that anymore. Now I am a computer operator. I make good money, I enjoy my job, I could do without the night work though. I don't really regret the 5 years I spent in that industry. On the contrary, I learned some very valuable lessons. Hell I don't think I would be doing what I am doing today without them.
But I am probably more annoyed with telemarketing calls then the average person. I work nights, 6pm-6am.
Know what 11am phone calls do to me?
That being said I have pity for the honest people in the industry. There are a lot of people that are honest, hard working and intelligent. There are retired people that need extra income. I would hate to see the industry shut down and these people all be out of work.
With that attitude I kind of look at telemarketing calls as my problem. When I get one I tell them to take me off the list. That is a legal thing by the way, there is more byte to that phrase then you would think. If they get too annoying I unplug the phone until I wake up.
I agree with you that I shouldn't have to do that. I understand everyones point as well. That is why I am not saying that the 'do not call registry' is evil.
It is not.
It just won't work.
Sure, it's small inconvenience. It's also a small return. Is it okay to steal, if you only steal five cents at a time? Eh, whatever, I don't care about five cents. What if you stole five cents at a time from every person in the country? That's the kind of equation telemarketers are making -- small returns from small inconveniences, multiplied by every person in the country.
We should stop worshipping jobs. We should start being concerned about productivity. Telemarketers have jobs, but they are completely unproductive. That's not the kind of economy I want to support.
...are power-grabbing politicians that exempt themselves from their own shitty laws.
Google for "corporate personhood". It will blow your mind.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Sorry, try again.
thomas.loc.gov searches are time based. Results expire quickly. You need to find a more permanent link (house)
The text of the bill can be found here (House, PDF). Or here (Senate, PDF)
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Unless those 50 Million Americans want P2P trading of music.
Does this mean that the RIAA gives more money to political campaings than the ATA?
I'm not saying that using other peoples creative works without compensating them is right. But if 50 Million Americans can't be wrong shouldn't compulsary liscensing been more of a slam dunk?
Denying political speech would essentially set the bill up for a potential legal challenge on first ammendment basis that would be much tougher to defend it from than a bill that restricts only commercial speech.
Reader #7 says: "I am a telemarketer who has been feeding my family through this type of work for 17 years...[cut]...Telemarketing has made jobs available to those that were laid off from Corporate America. Unfortunately more people will be laid off if this law takes effect. I'm not saying we shouldn't respect people's rights. I'm just saying leave our jobs alone."
I didn't touch your job, b****. Quit calling me! Come on. Times change. Our family newspaper went under due to the popularity of eBay. Should I sue ebay? (RIAA would).
Honestly though, no one is touching these jobs. People survived before phones, they'll have to survive now.
Check out Reader #9: "I guess the only question for the people who advocate the Do Not Call List is: What would you rather have us do? Should we loot, burn, and take what we need to survive? Or would you rather look at the caller i.d. and not answer the phone?
Excuse me? You're saying 2 million workers are suddenly going to loot & burn just to survive. Because they are unable to get a job besides Telebitchemarketer? I don't remember looting after the dot com bubble. Listen, I'm quite the liberal & democrat, but even I don't mind sounding like Ronald Reagan on this issue. Get another fsking job!
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Any business model which pisses off the majority of your customer base is doomed to failure.
Of course one could argue that an unsolicited call is a violation of property rights. "I didn't give you permission to send a phone signal into my household. You're trespassing!" Perhaps that is an argument even a libertarian could accept. Though since that argument is certainly a grey one, let's look at it this way: is legislation really needed?
Handling telemarketing is quite easy. One can use caller ID. Then you only answer the phone when you want to talk to the other person. Though not the norm, I personally know about when I can expect phone calls, and I know the hours when telemarketers don't call; I'm pretty accurate in only answering calls I want without caller ID by keeping this in mind. So with either approach, you can easily not answer telemarketers. I've found that not answering their calls makes the amount of calls come down drastically. I probably get only 1 telemarketing call every week or two that gets to talk to my answering machine.
Furthermore, many telemarketers get people's number because people are too lazy to read privacy statements and mark off what is needed to tell a company not to contact you or share your information. For example, when my mortgage got sold to another bank, I actually read the "junk mail" the new bank sent me to find an easy way to let them know that I do not want any telemarketing from them. Most people probably would have just tossed it out without reading it.
And finally, there is a telemarketer's alliance you can contact to have your number removed from all its member companies, and if you bother to tell a telemarketer on the phone not to call you again then they are legally obligated not to call you. (Some people have gotten rich suing those who disobeyed, so there's a good revenue oppurtunity if it fails!)
So in summary, it seems to me that there are plenty of options for stopping telemarketing. I believe the thrust of this demand for legislation is due to people's laziness/stupidity in taking advantage of these options to take care of themselves. Now granted, some will rhetorically ask why they must do this? That only holds water if you believe that you have some sort of divine right to use phones in an omnipotent manner to your liking. Using these methods to take care of yourself is no different than paying money for a Tivo and taking the effort to push a button to skip comercials on the cable networks you already pay to see.
I think it all boils down to the "inertness of mankind", demanding that other people take care of them because they are too lazy to take the minimal effort needed to stop the telemarketing problem. It seems an example of what Bastiat pointed out in "The Law", as per my sig.
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
"How come the Republican party can call me, but Sears can't?"
Because you can vote the Republicans out of office, but you can't vote Sears out of business.
If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
When did bending-over for big business become "defending the constitution?"
Read the document sometime, you'll see the ideals of the Enlightement in print which include but are not limited to protection from government, protection from others, personal autonomy, democratic voice, freedom from religion, etc.
If an industry is considered a nuisance by a vast majority of Americans and is limited through grassroots effort this can easily be seen as a democratic action at work. Dissenters might say its the tyranny of the majority, but they can have my telemarking calls if they truly believe that. Something tells me they won't volunteer. Would Ron Paul "defender of the Constitution" let coal burning plants pollute your neighborhood because an overisght comission via the EPA is more "big bad government?"
Just because an industry exists doesn't mean that limiting it is 'big government.' Does Ron Paul want to live in country where we're citizens of corporations because of an irrational fear of "big bad government?" Probably. Would he let Microsoft go with a light slap on the wrist like Bush did. Definiately. Sorry about how your upstart was illegally crushed by the big business, but better that then more "big government" eh?
All the neolib economists, starting with old man Milton, would just love to tear down the state and the protections it provides and let us become modern day serfs.
Funny thing about free markets, they have a problem remaining free. Don't let that fact get in the way of a some irrational ideology though.
6 of the 8 who voted against this were from states centrally located in the U.S.
:)
It makes sense because long distance rates are cheaper there. A few cents a minute savings really adds up when you've got a phone room filled with hundreds of people working the phones.
I own a business programming online surveys and a lot of my work comes from research studies that used to be conducted by huge phone centers out in the midwest. I like to think that I'm helping put them out of business. Too bad that telephone surveys aren't affected by the do not call list. It would earn me more work!
Here's a fairly comprehensive list of CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) phone centers in the U.S. sorted by state.
Notice the word "MY" in that sentence. My phone. In my house. My phone bills being paid from my REAL job.
My parents call, anyone calls, and we listen to it ring three times. Afraid to answer it. We have to screen each call. The process can take 25 seconds. 5 times a night. We then turned it all the way down. Missed two emergency phone calls from my parents going to the hospital. DIdn't see the blinking message til the next morning.
I find NO sympathy from telemarketers. There is MUCH more going on than when you blurt out "no one is MAKING you pick up the phone". It's my phone dammit, I WANT to pick it up, because it's a communication device. I didn't hire a fucking ringing billboard to put inside my house for $15 a month, just so that I can ignore it. If everyone ignored their phone, like you just suggested, you'd be out of a job then too, right?
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
I would have switched anyway, since the cell phone package is a more affordable bundle that includes caller ID and voice messaging. But more importantly, to the point that you think is some sort of inconsistency: the cell phone is a metered service, landlines service is typically unmetered (except for outbound long distance calls). Answering a cell phone more costs me more money. Answering my home phone more does not. And even if it wasn't illegal to solicit to a cell phone (so go ahead and lobby for the repeal of that law for all I care), the technology inherent in the device still helps me filter out the bad guys at a better price than my local landline monopoly does. The part that helps is that there is an actual free market happening in the cell phone business. Not so with the children of Ma Bell.
And sheesh. Really. Just because I chide Slashbots to maybe put the old Thinking Cap(tm) on, doesn't mean I don't support this law or any other law in particular. I'm just surprised at this crowd, that's all. Normally all we ever hear is Libertarian yada-yada-yada around here or "information wants to be free", except when it comes to spam and telemarketers, and then suddenly it's "shoot those scum!" I should think that the same brilliant minds that go around doing crazy stuff like internet-enabling TI calculators or building terabyte RAID filesystems out of 5.25 inch floppy drives would be excited to think up fun and interesting ways to defeat spammers and telemarketers.
I do not have a signature
This would be the same FCC that voted for media consolidation? I think that the current makeup of the FCC favors corporations over individuals, and would probably not advocate creating a do-not-call list in the first place.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Its putting food on someone's table, and is better than them being on welfare.
"In other news, a recent crackdown on inner-city crime has caused a loss of jobs in the window-repair and alarm-system industries."
So should we all go around breaking windows to generate repair jobs? No. This is known as the broken-windows fallacy. What the naive "destruction == job-creation" analysis misses is that in the absence of all this destruction, people can put their time and capital to more productive uses. IOW, when people stop breaking in and stealing stuff, more businesses move in, existing businesses have to spend less on security, and more jobs are created.
The short-term, localized job-creation benefit of crime is more than offset by the long-term, distributed opportunity cost.
I personally fail to see how it is some great inconvenience to have telemarketers calling you every so often.
In the case of telemarketers, what is being destroyed is time and productivity. That "inconvenience", even though it is seems negligible, can really add up when integrated over the number of people it affects.
Let us suppose that there are 500 telemarketers whose full-time job it is to talk to people who do not want to hear from them (some of the 50 million people who explicitly said so by signing up for the list). They call these people, and take some time reading scripts to them and getting yelled at.
Clearly, they are wasting at least 500 full-time jobs worth of other people's time. But telemarketers use machines to do the dialing and ringing and so on, so they actually waste *more* of the victims' time. And it takes time to recover from an interruption, so you can add that time on there too.
This is time that people would otherwise be spending productively participating in the economy or resting to recharge for productively participating in the economy when they go back to work. People whose evenings are constantly disturbed by telemarketers go back to work less happy, less rested, and less productive, and so their employers, who were giving the employees this time off for a good reason, suffer because the returns on their investment in employee time off are lowered.
And, of course, we have the fact that the telemarketers are talking to people who don't want their crap anyway, so the whole thing is fruitless.
Telemarketers calling people who don't want their crap represent a net drain on the economy. The fact that the drain is spread out over lots of other businesses and workers and produces a tiny, localized benefit doesn't mean that it's good for the national economy as a whole, anymore than thieves are.
Finally, when you consider the fact that many of these jobs are going over to India, anyway, we lose even the job-creation benefit, and the drain is even greater.
I don't know any of the rest of them but I do know Ted Strickland. Ted Strickland wants to protect peopele's jobs in his area, and yes, there is at least one Telemartking firm located in his district in southeastern Ohio that employs at least 500 people.
Fuck you.
Now I have no clue how many of those jobs may or may not be lost by this bill, but the fact is, he is voting to protect those jobs. I personally fail to see how it is some great inconvenience to have telemarketers calling you every so often. Its putting food on someone's table, and is better than them being on welfare. My brother in law worked for the firm for a time. In that impovershed area of the country good paying jobs are hard to come by.
Fuck you and your brother.
So yes, I think Mr. Strickland represented his area well. He wanted to protect some jobs that some people have, regardless of the slight inconvenience of a few.
Go eat a dick. You will put your number on that list too if you haven't already. Hypocritial bastard. Welcome to my killfile.
How do you figure that? If it's 50 million phone lines, then the number of people involved is going to be less than the number of lines because for all people N, some number own at least one and possibly more (e.g., if you signed up the main home line, the office line, and the cell). Now, of course, if we're talking 80-100 million lines....
What is your Slash Rating?
ring ring ring who's there?
opted out, why a call this evening?
Mexico, you have phone too
It's not a matter of the first amendment protecting this behavior, it's the lack of a governmental mandate to prevent it. It's your right to use your phone as you see fit because there is no rational grounds for removal of that right.
You do have every right not to listen. Nobody said you have to answer the phone call of a telemarketer or even have your phone ring when one calls. A person placing a call doesn't ring your phone; he simply sends a signal to your phone. That your phone rings and disturbs you is really your fault entirely. Buy a smarter or quieter phone and it wouldn't happen.
I'm sorry, but this is how the phone system works. The telemarketers here are doing nothing wrong: they're abiding by their agreements with the phone companies and playing entirely within the rules of the phone system. If you don't like it then you really need to stop paying for service, not go running off to the government.
You're missing a critical element here, as I pointed out in a reply further down. Congress is telling one group of people that they cannot talk to another group of people; people that have specifically requested not to be talked to. It basically boils down to "They don't want to talk to you, so stop calling them." The government is not selecting people to put on the list, they aren't paying incentives to be on the list, nor are they forcing people to sign up. This is no different than each individual telling the telemarketers "put me on your do not call list," except now there's just one big do not call list.
True, but that's assuming the general public won't be reminded every time some scum sucker calls them during dinner time. In the same vein, the congresscritters might face some heavy pressure to close that political phone call loophole come election time.
(Slightly OT, but last time Congress passed something this fast, we got that lovely gem known as the Patriot Act...Scary.)