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."

Comments

How about an anti-spam bill?

[__aaowgu6674]

Why can't they pass an anti-spam bill as quickly?

Re:How about an anti-spam bill?

[igabe]

It's one thing to block a phone number. It's another to block an email.

Email is complicated. While most telemarketers seem to call from inside the US, email comes from all over the world.

Spam is too profitable and too complex to just stop with a finger. Making a quick initiative to block spam is often fatal as seen when the first spam filters came out. All of a sudden you didn't receive that one email saying you won the lottery. =)

Re:Regulations

[eln]

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.

West has behaved correctly throughout this

[PhoenixRising]

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.

Where do they come from?

[Gonoff]

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...

Re:How warm and fuzzy..

[Arcturax]

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.

Re:Representative government?

[WhiteWolf666]

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.

Re:Representative government?

[southpolesammy]

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.