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10th Circuit Says FTC Can Enforce Do Not Call
TCPALaw writes "Reuters is reporting
that the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that the FTC can
go ahead with administration and enforcement of the national Do-Not-Call
list, staying a lower court ruling that blocked the FTC from
implementing the list. Now I can sue
those pesky telemarketers .. I have already gotten
3 telemarketing calls to the phone number I put on the national list
since the list went into effect."
Reader jhlund1976 points to the court's decision itself. Note, as
strredwolf does, that this only means the FTC can "run the registry while a
challenge from telemarketers winds its way through the courts." Strredwolf also points to the
all-knowing
Google News link.
So both the FCC and the FTC can enforce the do-not-call list. Personally, I don't care who enforces it as long as they have the power to do so.
here in canada we dont have any fancy do not call lists. I've started doing it the old fashioned way. when telemarketers call i tell them to please never call back again. before, i received at least 2 calls per day, now its about 3 per week, and the number keeps decreasing. it actually works, if you are getting repeat calls from certain parties. so, try that out, people in canada, and other non-US places.
It won't effect this type of scum http://www.datausainc.com
http://Lenny.com
At the end of the day its my choice if I want to speak to someone. If someone in the street says hi and I don't want to speak to them I won't. Also if I put a sign round my neck saying "Don't speak to me", as its my right I would like to think people would respect that.
If I do the same on my phone and say I only want people who I know or need to speak to contact me why shouldn't I be allowed? If I want to speak to someone about a product I will call them
In the UK there is something similar called the TPS (Telephone Protection System) which actually does work but the again we don't have the implicit right to free speech
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
"I have already gotten 3 telemarketing calls to the phone number I put on the national list since the list went into effect."
well, you can't sue them, since the list wasn't supposed to be enacted until early October anyway, meaning that even though your name was on the list, it was not yet banned from telemarketing calls.
- HeyYou
Telemarketers may still call you, if they have a pre-existing business relationship with you. So if you bank with BofA for example, BofA and all of its subsidiaries (and IIRC, business partners) can/will call you.
we'd just walk 30 miles in the snow to the local light plug, that's what we called power outlets back then. Then we'd run copper wire all the way to our phone, and send some through the line to melt the telco's links between me and them.
It only worked if you tied onions to your shoelaces, cause that was the style at the time...
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
on what (good) news will be brought to us tomorrow by the 11th Circuit.
We had a great decision from the 9th yesterday, and from the 10th today. Can we get the Hatrick?
Finally a good ruling on this. I have heard enough about free-speech, etc. The court has affirmed a simple fact: people have the right to end harassment against them.
It's not in force until the court cases are resolved, so yeah you will still get calls. Move to Pennsylvania, we have a DNC list and since being on it I have gotten no calls.
It's a numbers game, really. What is the bigger pain the the public's arse? 60 phonecalls / day that we don't want to get, or some regulation that gives us a central place to say, "don't call me, or I'll SUE YOU."
The fact is, for consumers, the numbers are against us. There are LOTS of businesses out there competing for our interest, and they will use any outlet they think is valid for their marketing purposes.
The more people they can get their message to, the better. That means that as they all expand their marketing efforts, we all get a lot more calls. The problem is, there's a limit to how many unwanted solicitations we as individuals can tolerate, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I've reached mine.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
Although I agree that telemarketers don't have the right to call me at home if I don't want them to, I don't like this law because non-profit and politcal organizations are exempt. This is unconstitutional in that it makes a distinction between speech for profit and speech with other agendas. If it's not a free speech issue (as I think), but instead a no free platform for speech issue (i.e. you can have your free speech, but not in my living room), then I should have the right to block political and non-prfit calls as well.
Vote for Pedro
Under the new regulations passed, they are required to provide you with their name/phone number. If they don't, use complain about a call feature on your phone. When the telco calls to find out about your situation explain it to them.
No more Micro$oft bashing from me. Its like bashing at the special olympics.
I am getting calls, but the callers say that it is legal because "they are not selling anything". They want to 1) lower my interest rate on my non-existant mortgage, 2) Have me over for 3 hours to watch their presentation on a time share, or 3) sell me insurance.
Why do these people think they can get away with it? Should I report them? I suspect that this law is filled with all sorts of holes, as usual. Anyone care to comment or having similar experiences?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
...And it includes anyone and everyone who I don't recognize on my Caller ID.
If people don't have the courtesy to identify themselves when they call, I won't answer the phone. I certainly don't answer calls from the Number 1 caller, "Out Of Area".
And best of luck to anyone trying to sell windows to my answering machine.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
-- this is such a huge gap in the law. The call went something like, "Hello Mr. Foo, this is National First Mortgage and we are conducting a survey of people to see who would like to refinance..." That is where I hung up.
I expect as the number of telemarketing calls I receive drop, the number of surveys will increase.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The arguement about the free speech issue not withstanding, there is a very fact about this bill that makes the law completely irrelevant in the far term.
This is because of two loopholes that exist in the law. For one, you have the issue of the pre-existing business relationship. While this is not presently a problem, what you're going to see happen is many companies that were previously not in the business of telemarketing opening new subsidiaries solely devoted to offering their "valued customers" "valuable offers" from their "valued partners."
The second loophole really isn't a loophole per se, but a simple and unfortunante fact that US law does not affect those overseas. Already, a large portion of telemarketing is being pushed to overseas locations -- much like the rest of US jobs. Calls originating in India from a corporation headquartered in the Bahamas won't be affected by this law.
In short, all this law will do is cause a major shift in the telemarketing industry. Banks and grocery stores will become the new telemarketing companies, but in the long term, we'll just be annoyed by Indians and Cambodians.
All of those pre-recorded telemarketing calls have been illegal for 12 years and nobody would bust them. I hope the bigger fines will get somebody, somewhere interested in seeking out and fining the scofflaws.
All I've got left is a cell phone. No land line.
And the cost difference is $5... Less!
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
thinking about this. I wouldn't even sign up for the registry when a computer can now be used to screen your calls. It might just help those offshore telemarketing companies in annoying you at dinner if they can easily access the registry without even paying!
The rules cover this
The telemarketing companies complain that the DNC list will severely harm their profits. But with some simple and rather obvious reasoning, it's very easy to dispute this claim.
Consider this, if your number is on the DNC list, chances are you weren't likely to buy much from a telemarketer, anyways. What telemarketers assume is the 50 million numbers that are on the list would be every bit as likely to buy from them as the numbers not on the list. I think my scenario is more likely.
I tend to think the people that haven't signed up to the DNC list either aren't really annoyed by telemarketers or they find some of the products useful and would buy from a telemarketer. There's also the people who don't know of the DNC list, but I doubt that accounts for very many people.
So the real effect of this is the people who are willing to buy from the telemarketers are far less likely to sign up for the list.
It was a wise webmaster who said, in response to some clients blocking their banner ads, that he doesn't care. If they block the banner ads, they probably wouldn't click or buy, anyway. It saves him bandwidth.
Along the same lines as his argument, I'd argue that this actually makes telemarketing more efficient. You are more likely to sell your products to someone who would not sign up for the DNC list than to someone who would sign up for it.
Another thing that really annoys me about telemarketers is when they call, they usually show up on my caller ID as UNAVAILABLE. The problem is there are also legitimate callers who show up the same. I think it needs to be mandatory that those conducting phone calls for the purpose of commercial activity (solicited or otherwise) should be required to display their number and business/name on the recipient's caller ID. This means if you're calling someone to try to sell them a product, you can't call anonymously, either.
Even if the DNC list is overturned in court, my idea for requiring them to show their caller ID information is completely constitutional. And anyone who has a caller ID can simply not answer the phone if they don't wish to receive such calls.
I have a land line that I never connect to a phone. Its just for internet use. But, whenever I am filling out forms and providing phone numbers in applicatios, I give out this number.
I have a cell phone for all communication purposes and I only give out that number to the people who can call me. Once in a while, very rarely telmarketers call on the cell number too, but if I tell them they are calling me on my cell phone, they hang up and never call back.
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
No they're not telemarketers, but they are researchers. The people that call during dinner and ask for 'opinions' in efforts to 'improve customer service'. Yeah it's legal. I know cause I "USED" to work for them. and they suck.
BRG Research Services
Operation hours:
7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (MST)
Phone:
(801) 373-9923
Toll free:
(800) 800-8784
Fax:
(801) 374-2751
Address:
50 East 500 North, Suite 200
Provo UT, 84601
Sign them up for mailing lists etc. And JAM their phone lines.
Oh yeah, call the Microsoft Dogs on them. They have illegal copies of Windows , illegally registered copies of winzip (you can tell when the registration name is X and code is obviously hacked). and a multitude of pirated software on their systems.
I know, I work there. And I dont' care of the company goes under. They suck [goatse.cx]
Apparently this is a little known fact, but for those of you still recieving calls after the 1st of October; perhaps you should be aware that the list is only issued to Telemarketing Firms quarterly. What does this mean to you? Well if you signed up after September 1st, then your name will not be on the list that goes into effect on October 1st. Instead, your name will be on the list that is issued on January 1st. Just a little clarification.
It's just too plain obvious that will happen next; in every 'charity' call, they will try and sell you stuff you don't want, and will 'donate' $1 to a charatiy, by that making it a 'charity' call.
So they will still call, telling you that they focus on they charity, trying to sell you stuff you do not want/need.
The rules are plain to unclear from my point of view...
EPIC has a handy timeline of Do-Not-Call Registry events at http://epic.org/privacy/telemarketing/dnc/
because no such law was passed.
The Law says the government enforces my telling them they can't talk to me.
Vermifax
Logout
Now I can sue the telemarketers, if someone ever gets on the line that is. A few weeks ago I decided to just start f#*$ing with the telemarketers. Sound like I'm interested, and keep them on the line for a while and then just start meowing.
What I've discovered is that most of the time when I pick up the phone and say hello I just hear clicks and then it hangs up on me. I get like 8 calls a day like this and most of the time never get to speak to someone. I finally got sick of it and did a *77 which is supposed to block calls without caller ID info but I'm guessing it only works for the Private (ie blocked) calls and not the Unavailable calls that come from most telemarketers.
I understand that computers do the actual dialing and they call multiple people and the first to answer and trigger the voice recognition software gets to the actual telemarketing drone but even when I answer on the first ring and start saying "Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?...." it still hangs up on me.
Anyone else experiencing this?
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
It amazes me how stupid net-savvy people are when it comes to reading laws.
Note to the author of the writeup:
This list is only going to save you from telemarketing "cold calls" which are usually calls from newspapers asking you to sign up.
This is not going to get rid of calls from people calling on behalf of the phone company, your credit card, or your bank.
This is also not going to get rid of the police and fire dept. "cold calls" that you get from time to time.
If anything, this list is a great way to give illegitimate telemarketing enterprises a free list of names. If you notice an *increase* in telemarketing calls, you'll think back to my response here and slap your forehead.
And if you think you can turn these companies in by yourself, that's great. Just try starting a lawsuit. Let's see how far you get before you give up cause of the time you have to put into it. My guess is you'll start looking at the annoyance of calls as simple compared to the annoyance of trying to figure out exactly *who* it is that you can sue.
If you have ever posted with "IANAL" you're basically SOL.
One way to screw telemarketing companies is to simply leave your phone off the hook. This holds open the switch at the exchange so even when they hang up and pick the phone up again, it is still connected to your line. This is why you are told not to hang up if there is a bomb threat - it keeps the connection open so they cannot use the phone again, and allows the phone company/police to track the line even if it is spoofed.
:)
It means that you've tied up that particular phone line until YOU decide to hang up. In my case, since I don't get many calls to my landline and people who know me call my mobile, I can leave it open a LOOOONNNGGG time!
If everyone did this, instead of the first reaction (to hang up), they would soon be immobilised.
Visceral Psyche Films
They're breaking the law:
- uses technology that ensures abandonment of no more than three percent of all calls answered by a live person, measured per day per calling campaign.
- allows the telephone to ring for 15 seconds or four rings before disconnecting an unanswered call.
- plays a recorded message stating the name and telephone number of the seller on whose behalf the call was placed whenever a live sales representative is unavailable within two seconds of a live person answering the call.
- maintains records documenting adherence to the three requirements above.
Personal note: If you want to sic the FTC on abandoners, you'll need to track them down first. There is a "star" number similar to *69 that IDs any incoming phone call (including blocked, out-of-area, etc) and records it at the local telco. The list can then be obtained by a judge or other law enforcement officials. Ask your telco and/or police department for this number, and use it after receiving abandoned calls.