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Telemarketers to Target Cell Phones
sik puppy writes "According to this article on msnbc, telemarketers may soon be targeting cell phones." The article discusses how some of these will be accidental, but others will be in response to things like the do-not-call registry.
...for the squandering of my incoming minutes?
In the UK we've been getting SMS spam messages for years already.
Of course, the cost of sending these messages means that you don't get many, and they won't come with a 150KB attachment for no good reason.
(Pardon My referencing of the US code, i'm not a lawyer and thus don't know the proper way to cite things)
8 &mode=thread&tid=126&tid=111&tid=99&tid=12 3
Title 47, Chapter 5, Subchapter II, Part I, Section 227, Article b, Item 1, Subitem B, Instance iii
It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call;
Thus anyone using an auto-dialer (i.e. 99% of telemarketers) are inviolation of the law and subject to a $500 fine in small claims court.
See these for more info:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/05/11623
http://www.panix.com/~eck/telemarket.html
Guy: Hello?
Telemarketer: Hello! I am running for Mayor in the City of Ritzville, so this is a political call exempt from the Do Not Call list. I am running for mayor on the platform of keeping our wonderful vacation timeshares as cheap as possible for the good bargain hunters. In fact, you can get this beutiful timeshare right on the beach for less than you might think. Would you like to hear more about these wonderful deals that happen to be in the city I'm running for mayor in? If so, press 1 to talk to a representative now!
Court in session, Glib Telemarketers are appealing a ruling that they can't call cell phones. Aide to judge notifies the judge that there's a call on his ultra-private emergencies only cellphone. Judge retires to his chambers to take the call...
Voice: "Hello. I'm Sodum, and I'm calling on behalf of Glib Telemarketers. Would you be interested in one of our free unlimited-credit credit cards today?"
Judge returns to court and sentances everyone at Glib Telemarketing to a slow and painful death.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This idea won't fly. The reason is simple: money. On landlines it costs nothing to receive a call, so consumers can complain but that's about it as far as the telephone carriers are concerned. Cel phones and SMS are a different story. When a telemarketer calls a cel phone or sends a text message, the phone's owner can point to a line on his bill and say "This unwanted call/message cost me $X.". Now the phone owner has proof of an actual dollar amount to go with his complaint, and he can demand reimbursement. If the phone carrier reimburses, it's going to turn telemarketing into a cost for the carriers and they're going to do something about it. If phone carriers refuse to reimburse, we'll see something like the junk-fax law passed ASAP. One way or another, when the telemarketers start generating provable costs to the recipients of their calls there's going to be a major backlash against the telemarketers.
Telemarketers, take note: if you won't compromise, if you insist that it's either no limits at all or nothing, you may find that the rest of us consider giving you nothing at all a perfectly acceptable outcome. :)