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Appeals Court OKs FTC's Do-Not-Call List
GTRacer writes "The USA Today website just posted a report that the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals (Denver) has upheld the FTC's national Do Not Call registry. In their decision, the Court found the list to be 'a valid commercial speech regulation...without burdening an excessive amount of speech.' The telemarketers had challenged the constitutionality of blocking commercial free speech while allowing charities and select others to continue phone solicitation. Interestingly enough, 'Officials in the telemarketing industry did not immediately return calls seeking comment.' Isn't it now obvious these people have a double-standard when it comes to reaching out and touching someone?" The court's decision is available to read.
"Companies can telemarket to anyone who has bought, leased or rented something from them within the last 18 months, or to anyone who has inquired about or applied for something with them within the last three months.
It also exempts long-distance phone companies and airlines; banks and credit unions; and insurance companies operating under state regulation.
You could drive a truck full of mailing lists through that loophole. I am sure they will come up with something....
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
"without burdening an excessive amount of speech"? How about, "an excessive burdening of free speech"?
Must have been one of those "C" average appointments I keep hearing about.
'Officials in the telemarketing industry did not immediately return calls seeking comment.'
Yeah, that's a hoot, but rest assured, their operators aren't exactly standing by on this one, they're probably lobbying like all get out.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wooooo hooooo! Chalk one up for the little guy. Now if I could just get every other 80's fan from calling my phone number (867-5309-eee-ine) I'd be a happy man!
P.S.- no, my name is NOT jenny.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Even when I pay Qwest to block telemarketers, THEY call me to sell me stuff.
Interestingly enough, 'Officials in the telemarketing industry did not immediately return calls seeking comment.' Isn't it now obvious these people have a double-standard when it comes to reaching out and touching someone?
Where's the double standard? They have yet to challenge the legality of you not picking up your phone.
My personal favorite was a call a got a few years ago. A qwest customer service rep. called at dinnertime to sell a new service. The new service in question... blocking telemarketers's calls. I asked her if it would block calls like hers and she told me, "No, you are our customer so we can still call you." I didn't opt for the service.
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'Officials in the telemarketing industry did not immediately return calls seeking comment.'
I bet they were just in the middle of dinner, all you have to do is try your call again at 9pm.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Perhaps we should call them over and over again, just to be sure. Around dinner time, and maybe again later.
And all hours of the weekend. Definitely then.
Fairly soon we'll have a Can-Call Act 2004 which allows telemarketers to call anyone as long as they identify themselves (hi, this is Mike) at the beginning of the call, and allows callees to opt-out (hang up the phone).
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I have always been annoyed at the telemarketing industry's arguments as to why they should be able to do this. They have always maintained that it was free speech. What they fail to realize is that it is free speech that I have to pay for! Sure, I would have a phone anyway, but basically they are wasting my money. If they want to market on the street corner, go right ahead because that truly is free speech (obviously within limits) but when you come into my home on the telephone line I am paying for, then it crosses the line and that is not free speech.
This leads me to another thought. I have always wondered why the telemarketing industry doesn't pay for people's phone lines in return for getting phone spam. ISP's do it, why not here?
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Either the DNC lists are working or my phone has been out of order for a while. I'd as a friend to call and check but I only know virtual people.
They should be GLAD to have people block their calls, because the people blocking their calls are (probably with some exceptions) the people who aren't going to buy anything from them. It eliminates wasted phone time. Now they should rejoice that they can cut costs by focusing on the few people who actually WILL buy from them, probably just to talk to another human being (that is, if it's not an automated system).
Esoteric reference.
Can someone explain why the telemarketers are fighting this with everything at their disposal, when this list actually helps them? By excluding the numbers of people that are not interested in receiving telemarketing solicitations, it increases the likelihood that a particular call is to someone who is willing to buy. The DNC list also has other benefits that have not been foreseen by the telemarketers. For example, telephone numbers for fax machines and modems can be placed on this list so that telemarketers don't waste their time calling them.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Define telemarketing calls. What I think will happen is companies will adapt with something to obscure the dubious title of telemarketing companies. Think about it for a second... So company X cannot call you soliciting products, but a charity can still call you. So now using some lax LLC laws, a telemarketer can reinvent itself as some form of charity Company X charity... Sure they can pitch something honest sounding but let's take a look at namebranding for a second...
charity: "Good day sir, we're with the Microsoft Save the World foundation..."
Sure it sounds dumb, but I'm sure telemarketers will find a way around this. By the way no mention of how this includes those annoying companies calling you to do independent studies, surveys, etc. At least from what I saw on the page.
Oh well, it will be a matter of time (likely after November) where an anonymous plane mysteriously drops a bag of cash on someone politicians desk, and these laws are re-argued and reverse. Just like the Public Utility Holding Company Act, Federal Power Act, and Federal Communications Act. All down the tubes.
MoFscker
As a consultant for a large mortgage bank, I can assure you banks are not exempt.
This fact helped me convince upper management that outbound campaigns were a cost prohibitive idea.
...to get these fools who think they have a "right" to market to everyone to shut the hell up. A lot of us are sick of everything being done for profit at the expense of our own quality of life. Wouldn't it be nice if you could open your inbox, look in your mailbox, answer your phone or door, and know that there wouldn't be someone trying to sell you useless crap that you aren't interested in on the other end? How novel an idea. And then on top of all of this we get other assholes coming in trying to make money off of filtering out what we don't want disrupting us. (Privacy Manager from the phone company, or move to an ISP that has spam filtering even if they are more expensive or have other limitations you don't want) So you have to PAY to keep people from trying to sell you stuff? Has it really come to that?
This is not what the founding fathers had in mind. The America we are living in has been co-opted by people infected with a severe mental problem. That problem is the idea that you can't be "successful" unless you make more money than everyone else. When did we start encouraging this kind of thing? And Why? I suppose this is what we deserve for being a culture that worships the dollar. I'm sorry, but I'd like to be excommunicated right now. I don't want to have anything to do with people who measure their value in net worth. Instead I want to be part of a culture that that discourages stupidity. One where being able to "kick ass" or "rule" is of no value. I want to be part of a culture that realizes that if life is to be fair, we have to educate everyone and address each individual case as a society. I want to be in a culture where education is not K-12, but age four - death.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. My main point is that the DNC list wouldn't be neccessary if we hadn't fostered the ills of competetive personalities and avarice. If there wasn't a drive in our society to make the most money regardless of how good or poor your product is, this wouldn't be a problem. It wouldn't be a problem if, as a culture, we DIDN'T buy the crap that is sold via telemarketing and spam and direct mail. It especially wouldn't be a problem if instead we encouraged companies to make GOOD products and then rest on the quality of their product to sell them. After all, isn't that what competition and free market is really all about? The cream rising to the top so to speak?
I have no problem with people wanting to sell things as long as they realize it's not a right, it's a privelege. And, as the consumer, it's my right to decide on my own if the product is right for me... or even useful in any way. Sorry, but even if I was bald, I don't think I'd be buying spray on hair. It just doesn't seem like a good idea.
Un-news
My state's Do-Not-Call List has kept my phone blissfully silent for the last year or so. But the various DNC List laws have several loopholes. Perhaps the worst is the political campaign loophole. Worse yet, many of those campaigns are using automated responders which simply play a recording if you (or your answering machine) answers. Our primary is today, over the last three days I've gotten a half dozen unwelcome political calls and a dozen hung up calls that I can only guess are predictive dialers. For a phone that normally rings one a week this was a huge irritation. At least they haven't started calling my cell phone (yet).
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I work for an outsourced Telemarketing company and i can tell you the DNC lists are NO fun at all to manage!
And now that its got wide coverage , everyone we call wants to be or has applied to be on the FTC's list.All this is besides the numerous state lists that are maintained by all the states.
Lord of the Binges.
we can expect a Do-Not-Slashdot list to follow?
One example of this already:
In our local shopping mall there is a shiny new car parked in the walkway. Next to it is a box with a pile of "entry forms" on the top of it, enticing people to enter to win a new car, or a pile of cash or whatever.
When you read the fine print on the back of the card, you find that by filling out the card, you are giving them and anyone they feel like sharing it with permission to contact you via phone or mail.
I just wonder what would happen if someone filled out one of these for me (being on the Do Not Call list) without my knowledge or permission, and they contacted me. Hmm...
You probably shouldn't click this.
I registered on the UK's do not call list (a list that's not exactly advertised)
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk
I was totally fed up with the weekly telesales calls.
I registered in September 2002. I've had the letter on my desk ever since, ready to complain.
It was not until today (nice synchronicity) that I got my first sales call.
The sales drone thought I was pretty interested in the call, asking for their address and telephone number and the exact nature of the 'wonderful special offer'. Of course, what I was doing was getting the drone to tell me the details required to fill in the online complaint form.
She sounded genuinely shocked when I said "Thank you, I feel it is only fair to inform you that you are in breach of the Telecommunications (Data Protection & Privacy) Regulations 1999 and as such have just been reported to the TPS".
hehe well worth the wait
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Don't think that the telemarketters don't know their own business.
The other big difference is due to the low cost of sending spam v. the relatively high expense of placing calls. Even if the CAN-SPAM law starts getting enforced, the spammers could simply move offshore and continue their harrassment. I constantly get Italian-language spam (salami?) even though I only know about ten words of Italian. But when you factor in the costs involved, international long distance is currently too high a barrier for telemarketers to cross.
Sadly, this might all change with VoIP. "Voila-marketers" (I just made that term up) from off-shore sweatshops who can place international sales calls for almost-free just might do for the telephone what spam did for email. Scripts and canned recordings would even drastically reduce the language barriers, permitting poor English speakers to control synthesized voices that sound as smooth as James Earl Jones'. And so your prediction may unfortunately come true.
John
I don't recall ad-free telephones being some sort of fundamental human right. How about turning off the phone at dinner time? I'm sure this obvious solution never occured to those of us awaiting a call back from a job recruiter, our sick relatives at the hospital, a suicidal friend in desparate need of being talked out of doing something stupid, or a child unsure whether or not they can get a ride home from the mall... ever stop to think that I might feel obliged to answer my phone because there are more important people trying to contact me than telemarketers? And that the time I spend convincing somebody who won't take "fuck no!" for an answer could make a life-changing difference to somebody else who isn't a bottom-feeding scumbag?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
As much as I am annoyed by telemarketing, spam and all sort of other unsolicited products/services, I am dubious about this. I'm all for the Do-not-call list, but in this case telemarketers do have a point. Why allow charities and not them? The only reason so few people are complaining (even here on /.) is that most people are annoyed by telemarketing. If this was about a more neutral service, there would be serious complaints.
A better approach would be a do-not-call list with options: 1 option for "do not call me at all", and another option with "do not call me, but still allow charities", or something in this matter. This would give power to individual consumer, and remove any validity from telemarketers complaints.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
Why it is that non-profits and political campaigns are exempt in the first place?
... I don't want you to call, email, or mail me! Leave me the f*** alone! Don't call me; I'll call you. kthxbye.
My reaction when reading this blurb is, "Damn right, it's unfair -- ban them, too!"
I don't care if you're representing Joe Blow Lightbulbs Inc. or Mary Sue Parapalegic Midgit Orphans.org
-monique