FTC Rules Outlawing Robocalls Go Into Effect Next Week

coondoggie writes "Nearly a year after announcing the plan, new Federal Trade Commission rules prohibiting most robocalls are set to take effect Tuesday, Sept. 1. With the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls. Hopefully the rules will go a long way to helping consumers eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather or in this case prerecorded blather. The requirement is part of amendments to the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) that were announced a year ago. After September 1, sellers and telemarketers who transmit prerecorded messages to consumers who have not agreed in writing to accept such messages will face penalties of up to $16,000 per call."

Comments

Political robocalls too?

[patmandu]

...or did they make sure to keep that loophole in there for themselves again...

Re:Political robocalls too?

[Evan Charlton]

No, they left that in. FTFA:

However for those who have called on the FTC to help eliminate the other phone scourge - political robocalls - the new rules will not help. Calls from political campaigns are considered protected speech the FTC said. Ultimately consumers may get some help from state legislatures as many are regulating or looking to pass laws for more control over automated or robocall computer-generated phone-calling campaigns. One group, the National Political Do Not Contact Registry is campaigning to outlaw political robocalling altogether.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[Anonymous Coward]

They left the loophole open. "Call from political candidates are considered protected speech". Really, what did you expect?

Re:Political robocalls too?

[TheGratefulNet]

They left the loophole open. "Call from political candidates are considered protected speech". Really, what did you expect?

system is broken. time for overhaul.

free speech is when I ask you a question and you are allowed to answer and not fear for your life.

free speech is NOT the right to call me and force some stupid idea down my throat.

there IS a difference and its not subtle, either.

in no reasoning person's mind could a robocall, or ANY kind of political call, be called 'protected'.

if that's protected, I should be able to call a judge on his personal phone line and complain about his judgements. call my congresscritters on their personal lines and complain and 'sell' them on my way of doing things.

they want access to us? give us parity and we'll talk. so to speak.

no? not going to work that way?

time to redo the system. maybe from scratch, if that's what it takes.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[blackraven14250]

Don't be embarrassed for not getting politics shoved down your throat. You can hang up on a robot, and they wouldn't even know.

I think this is the wrong way to go about this. They should require every line used for marketing calls to show up on caller ID as "Marketing", and every call for political reasons to show up as "Political". Then people don't have to answer at all. You can add in a registry to keep people from calling, or you can require phone companies to block numbers with that name on the ID to a given number if you really want. The phone company idea would be my preference, as it's really easy to block numbers on our AT&T wireless lines on the net, and there should be no reason you can't do it on a land line just as easily.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How can you claim "free press" if the press is computer driven? Obviously only people using 18th century printing technology should enjoy freedom of the press...

Robocalls from "Americans United for Jesus and Kittens and Hey Did You Know My Opponent Loves Pedophiles?" annoy me; but trying to weasel-word your way around freedom of speech(freedom of explicitly political speech, no less) based on technological quibbling is Bad Idea.

"Sure, you have the right to speak, go ahead. However, I don't remember any 'right to have a packet encoded representation of speech make it to the other end of the wire' in the constitution..." "Sorry citizen, freedom of the press applies only to impact printed documents, don't you know what 'press' means? Inkjet or laser printed subversive literature will get you 20 to life..."

Re:Political robocalls too?

[harmonise]

In a election last year for a state representative, I voted against someone because they robocalled me. Thankfully, they lost the election. I wrote to them after the fact and told them why I voted for their opponent.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[dword]

What about calling from another country? I'm from Europe, but I've heard that the telemarketers solved most of their "problems" by simply using call centers from other countries. They haven't done anything, except outlawing robocalls from US telemarketers to US residents. One country down, 202 to go.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[commodore64_love]

WE NEED AUSTRALIAN BALLOTING. Then we could pass votes like this, without feeling like we "wasted" our vote on no-name politicians:

(1) Harry Browne - Libertarian
(2) Chuck Baldwin - Constitution
(3) Ted Weill - Reform
(4) McCain - R
(5) ---

BUT since I don't want to waste my vote, rather than vote for the first three which I already know will lose, I vote my fourth choice which is not the best man - just the one with the best chance of winning.

It's worth noting that during the first couple presidential elections, the Congress selected the president, and they used a process very similar to Australian balloting (casting multiple votes until somebody came-out on top). It would be very easy for the States to adopt this kind of ballot.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[jonadab]

> free speech is when I ask you a question and you
> are allowed to answer and not fear for your life.

Oh, it's a bit more than that. Free speech is when you can stand on on the sidewalk downtown and tell your political ideas to anyone who will listen, hand out pamphlets to anyone who will take them, hold rallies where five hundred like-minded people all get together in a public place...

I am even willing to accept unsolicited political phonecalls, as long as the number you're calling is a publicly listed number and not listed in the DNC registry, and provided it's a human doing the calling.

But machine autocalling with a pre-recorded message is something else. The objection here is NOT to what you are saying. The objection here is to the fact that you are wasting my time *only*, and not spending any of your own time to do so. It doesn't matter if your message is commercial or political, because we're fundamentally not talking about what you're allowed to *say*.

And the do-not-call registry should apply to all unsolicited calls. Ordinarily a politician can knock on your door and, if you answer, ask if he can have a moment of your time to tell you about $issue. A salesman can do the same thing. But if you put a sign on your door asking them not to do so, they're supposed to respect that. The DNC registry serves the same purpose as that sign on the door.

This is not a free speech issue. They can say whatever they want, in public. Nobody's going to arrest or penalize them for what they say. (Well, we might choose to vote for the other guy, but that goes with the territory when you run for public office.) It's not about speech. It's about privacy, and the right of the individual home-owner to choose who and what he allows into his home.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[jonadab]

This isn't about free speech or free press, because it isn't about WHAT you are allow to say or write. The issue is about how you (the salesman, the politician, whoever) are allowed to use my phone line, that *I* pay the bill for.

> freedom of the press applies only to impact printed documents,
> don't you know what 'press' means? Inkjet or laser printed
> subversive literature will get you 20 to life...

That's a straw man. You can print all the junk you want on your own inkjet printer, or on your own laser printer, or one that you rent... But *I* get to say what you can print on *my* printer, capische?

Re:Political robocalls too?

[swillden]

WE NEED AUSTRALIAN BALLOTING. Then we could pass votes like this, without feeling like we "wasted" our vote on no-name politicians:

With instant runoff voting, you can only safely vote for third party candidates if those candidates have no chance of winning. If one of them gets enough support to garner, say, 30% of the vote, he'll have drawn most of his support from the major candidate to whom he is ideologically closest, giving the election to the major candidate from whom he is ideologically furthest.

So IRV still requires voters to vote "strategically", unless the third party candidates are all too weak to have a chance at wining.

Better options are approval voting, Condorcet voting, or range voting. None of these are strategy-free, but none of them create situations where it makes sense to vote for a less-preferred candidate over your most-preferred candidate, unlike IRV or (much, much worse, plurality rules, the system we use).

Re:Political robocalls too?

[ubercam]

The only problem with "just hanging up on them" is when the robocaller ties up your line for the duration of its message, whether you've hung up or not.

I got one from the NDP during the last Canadian election. I picked up the phone and it said "Hi, this is Jack Layton and I need your support..." blah blah blah, so I hung up on it right away. I picked up the phone about a minute later to make a call and it was still going on and on. I tried dialling random numbers on the phone to make it shut up and it wouldn't work. I hung up and tried about a minute later and I got a dial tone.

I recorded all the details about the call that I could and wrote the phone company and told them that this call from the NDP tied up my line and I'd like to file a complaint about it because I might have needed to dial 911 or something during that time and would have been unable to do so, never mind being unable to use the phone at all, which we pay for, not the NDP. Someone from the phone company got back to me fairly quickly asking me for a bit more information and then a technician called me and said that he had just made some changes to our line to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. We haven't had a robocaller for a while now as far as I know. I don't know what he did exactly, but I'd like to know. Maybe someone familiar with the phone system could shed some light on it.

I also added the IC SIT (disconnected/non-existant number tone) to the beginning of our answering machine message in the hopes that it would reduce the number of robocallers and telemarketers that phone during the day. I know quite a few of them are unfortunately ignoring it because too many people caught on to the trick.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[greed]

They enabled "disconnect on hangup" on your line. If you have a burglar alarm installed that uses your phone line, the alarm company will arrange for the same feature.

Traditionally, POTS lines aren't disconnected until both sides go on-hook. With disconnect on hangup, the line is disconnected when one side goes on-hook, though it may take up to 10 seconds.

Re:Political robocalls too?

[jc42]

Robocalls says something about the character of the candidate.

That's only true if the robocall actually came from the candidate (or his campaign organization).

As others have pointed out, many political robocalls come from a candidate's opponent, in an attempt to get voters sufficiently annoyed at the candidate to vote against him/her. Unless you can verify that a robocall is actually from the candidate, it tells you nothing at all about the candidate.

Fraud is a routine part of many (perhaps most) political campaigns. It's routine to try to get voters to accept lies about your opponent. This is just one of many ways to do so. Google for "push poll" for another popular method.

Won't matter

[RedMage]

For the most annoying types (scams mostly) this won't matter any. There's already a "Do not call" mechanism that's ignored. The legitimate ones will obey, the rest will just continue on.
Yes, it gives some teeth for when you actually catch them, but for the millions of us who have been getting the "Your credit rating will be affected!!!" calls lately, I doubt it will make any difference to our evening meals.

Re:Won't matter

[codeguy007]

They just call from another country to get around the no call lists anyway so you're right.

Re:Won't matter

[timeOday]

There's already a "Do not call" mechanism that's ignored.

Junk phone calls are just a small fraction of what they were before the list, I'm surprised how effective it has been. So, I'm all for closing remaining loopholes.

Re:Won't matter

[Cimexus]

What's really funny is that it goes both ways too.

We have a Do Not Call register in Australia as well. You can sign up for it here: https://www.donotcall.gov.au/

When it was first introduced, telemarketing calls pretty much stopped dead. For a while. But after a while they started coming back. And funnily enough all the people on the other end had American accents now (or were pre-recorded Americans). And indeed I asked one of them once where he was located, and he said Texas.

Of course, the Australian Do Not Call register only applies to calls placed in Australia. So they got around it by setting up operations in the US and calling back to Australia. I imagine they use some form of VoIP for the international leg otherwise the phone bills would be obscene.

Re:Won't matter

[EdIII]

Not true. The real problem is that enough people don't complain and their is a level of apathy involved.

The FCC and Attorney Generals go after the companies providing the products being sold (more specifically those who profit) and not the call centers. When you get one of these calls you need to listen to them. Ask them questions about their products. What is the name of the product? It's manufacturer? Try to get some information.

Information is the real weapon. Once you call the FCC to complain you will be able to provide them with what they need to successfully identify the company and levy fines against them.

There is no getting around the DNC regardless of the location. It's just that not enough people are cooperating with the FCC to hurt them enough.

Re:Won't matter

[digitalchinky]

I'd be almost positive those calls are not originating from the US.

I'm Australian, I live in the Philippines. Everyone here speaks with a US accent from birth (when they speak English anyway, or is that American?). There are quite a multitude of call centers throughout the country that are devoted entirely to spamming various parts of the world. They are fully legal, earn the local economy quite a big chunk of profit so there is no government incentive to get rid of them. The locals don't just spam via telephone, there are also forum spammers for hire, along with any other method you can think of to get your message 'out there'. If there is money to be made, someone here will do it.

Oddly enough there are virtually no telemarketing calls to annoy us locally, no junk mail in the letterbox, and very little domestic spam through email.

But... but... but...

[QuoteMstr]

Governmunt regulation is bad and socialist and communist and will make our children weak and effeminate. I know it's true because Ronald Raygun told me so. Why does the FTC hate America?

RON PAUL! RON PAUL! RON PAUL!

Definition of "in writing"?

[CustomDesigned]

Presumably, "opt-in" counts as "in writing", and my library will continue to robocall to announce that my book on hold is available. But on the flip side, I can see all sorts of obscure checkboxes when you order online that enable robocalls should you not notice and check/uncheck them.

Unenforceable

[pete6677]

Scumbags who use robocalls don't care about laws or reputations. Most of the products they peddle are outright scams or at the very least a bad deal for customers.

The perpetrators will set up shop offshore and evade detection. This law, just like CAN-SPAM, will make no difference at all.

So.. what's the going rate for a callcenter in...

[Animaether]

So.. what's the going rate for a callcenter in... well, what's the cheapest place nowadays?

Paying somebody to call a bunch of numbers, regurgitate a preconceived message, then transfer to the appropriate office if the called person takes the bait... can't be all -that- expensive* and circumvents the 'pre-recorded' bit of a 'robocall', right?

If -only- that bit is what is ruled against, then an automated dialer can still at least only transfer those who answer the phone to the poor sod with the aforementioned job, too.

Surely a loophole can't be that big?

* more expensive than a completely automated dealie, of course, but the above is, I presume, the way they did this -before- such technology was available..

Hrmm

[acehole]

Happy Dude is not going to be happy.

Fine print

[RevWaldo]

With the rules, prerecorded commercial telemarketing robocalls will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls.

Ah.

You can expect the "permission" to be buried in the fine print of phone contracts, software licenses, and the like. And be sure to remember to uncheck that "share your information with third parties" box.

capcha time?

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm thinking it might be time.

something that ensures a human is at the other end, and a thinking one, at that. yeah.

phone spam is getting to the point where we need blacklists and whitelists. wildcards on names, numbers in caller-id. or even trapping on lack of caller-id.

arms race they want? we can meet that challenge.

but its a damned shame we've let ourselves get to this point ;(

Robocalls are worse than unsolicited email

[CrazyJim1]

I'd rather get 10 spam messages than one phone call. The phone call distracts me from my day to day activities, while email is a mode I put myself to check. I'm glad they're outlawing robocalls.

Our robocalls are in Spanish

[HangingChad]

That wouldn't be so bad, except no one here speaks Spanish. So I have no idea if it's a bill collector, a telemarkter, or a candidate running for office in a Spanish speaking area.

All the Spanish I know is basically ordering a beer and asking for directions to the bathroom, so I know they're not selling Dos Equis or directions to the toilet.

Thats actually pretty funny...

[msimm]

Calls from political campaigns are considered protected speech

But who knew we'd already granted computers rights?!!

Re:Thats actually pretty funny...

[bartwol]

I think a prerecorded message is analogous to either a bullhorn or a prerecorded television ad.

Neither bullhorn nor TV ad are allowed to enter into my home without my consent. It is practical for me to leave off (or to not have) a TV. But a phone provides essential services (including emergency services) that cannot function if it is turned off. The bullhorn, actually, can be annoying by coming through my window, but in fact, the state has retained latitude to regulate that problem through noise control regulations and requirements of permit for public demonstration.

The allowance of political calls (under the guise of free speech) simply reflects legislative selfishness...a willingness to enforce just behavior upon all but themselves. It reflects the self-serving, less-than-high ethics that characterizes all but the fewest of politicians. They rationalize it away under a Greater Good theory, in this case some abstract virtue of greater public participation in politics. But that's just a cover fib, their real motive being to avail themselves of political advantage through any and all legal means. If you want to see how much they care about public participation, check their records on trying to help people of opposing parties to participate in politics.

Do Not Call Has Worked Perfectely For Me

[MediaStreams]

"There's already a "Do not call" mechanism that's ignored"

I haven't gotten a single call on my mail line since the day I put it on the Do Not Call List.

Recently I got another number and couldn't figure out why I was suddenly getting unsolicited calls. Then I remembered the DNC List and once again haven't gotten a single unwanted call.

Re:Do Not Call Has Worked Perfectely For Me

[Shakrai]

I haven't gotten a single call on my mail line since the day I put it on the Do Not Call List.

Then you are amazingly lucky or keep your phone turned off most of the time. There was at least one outfit that was literally war dialing every single possible valid NANP number. They called police dispatchers, the White House, military bases, Congressional offices, etc, etc. I got at least three or four calls from them per month until the FTC shut them down.

They were a bunch of cocksuckers too. You'd challenge them on ANYTHING and they'd just hang up you. I gave up on trying to get removed from their "list" and tried to pretend to want to do business with them. They wanted a credit card and when I told them I didn't have one and wanted to mail them a check they gave me an "address" of "4321 Main St. Some Random City and Zipcode" and hung up on me.

Eventually I gave up on trying to figure out who they are and just started being incredibly nasty to them. I'd bust out the 'C' word if I wound up with a female caller and various racial epithets for the male callers. Most of them would hang up but a few of them got into shouting matches with me over how horrible it was to use such words. I'm not actually a racist or sexist but I figured it was the best way to piss someone off over the phone with a single word before they could hang up. Since they consumed my cell phone minutes and interrupted multiple dinners I figured it was only fair.

Re:Do Not Call Has Worked Perfectely For Me

[bronney]

The best way is to make it matters legally. Give them your credit card number, the one you don't use often or just sign one up just for this. Let them charge it, then take it up to the card center and police and say you have a lead on someone using your credit card illegally. If it's no traceable, you can't prove enough to charge my card either. If it is, you get the fuckers.

Re:scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

[Bill Dimm]

scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

You contradict yourself.

Re:scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

[QuoteMstr]

scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

You contradict yourself.

No, you do. A "scumbag" is a failed sociopath. We call the successful ones "CEO", "Hedge Fund Manager", and "Sir".

It is even worse than that....

[mysteryvortex]

This appears to me that it will weaken the existing prohibition against this practice by providing the "in writing" loophole. Calling without a real person on the other end was already illegal except in limited circumstances due to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA)

[...]
(1) Prohibitions

                It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or
        any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the
        United States--
[...]
                        (B) to initiate any telephone call to any residential
                telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to
                deliver a message without the prior express consent of the
                called party, unless the call is initiated for emergency
                purposes or is exempted by rule or order by the Commission under
                paragraph (2)(B);
[...]

How much do you want to bet that consent to robo-calls will quickly be added to the boiler plate in all sorts of contracts as well as privacy policies and TOS notices.

If it doesn't show up in everybody's mail box as part of a change to their credit cards' privacy policies, that might actually surprise me.

-Mysteryvortex

Re:It is even worse than that....

[QuoteMstr]

For fuck's sake, a contract isn't an atomic sacred unit of holy marketology. It's just a piece of paper.

The problem is Common Law, which holds that a contract is almost as sacred a the Ten Commandments except in limited circumstances. Courts have long rules that many sorts of contract are invalid if one party is deceived. Long form contracts with surprisingly asymmetric benefits to the drafted of the contract are a relatively modern chapter in the long history of contracts design to deceive. In practice, nobody reads the fine print. Saying "well, people should" is counterproductive because you know in practice that very few people will. By that logic, you can reduce all law to "well, people really shouldn't hurt each other."

What matters is how the contract is commonly understood, not what it actually says. It's high time for contracts of adhesion to be held to much stricter standards. Specifically,

1. No requirement of a standard form contract not commonly understood to be part of a contract of that type is enforceable.
2. What "commonly understood" means is to be constituted by an impartial poll of the issue in question

That means that if a cell phone company, for instance, claims that their contract allows them to give your number to telemarketers, that clause is unenforceable unless the writer of the contract can show, via an impartial third party poll, that common people understand the contract to permit that right.

Re:scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

[libkarl2]

scumbags don't call me, but politicians do

You contradict yourself.

No, you do. A "scumbag" is a failed sociopath. We call the successful ones "CEO", "Hedge Fund Manager", and "Sir".

TRIPLE KILL!!!