A District Court judge has put the national “Do Not Call” list on hold. The list, which was supposed to kick in 1 October, has been signed up for by…
A District Court judge has put the national “Do Not Call” list on hold. The list, which was supposed to kick in 1 October, has been signed up for by 50 million people. The full ruling is here.
[Insert muttering noise here]
Actually, it’s not as bad as it sounds. The judge rejected the challenge by the Direct Marketing Association and telemarkers to FTC regulations against “abandoned” calls, where telemarketers do not get on the line within two seconds of the call being picked up. (This comes about due to “predictive dialing,” programs that call you while the telemarketer is still on the line with another sucker, in anticipation of the their being free by the time you pick up. Yes, they evidently are that busy that they cannot wait to hang up before they dial again.)
Further, the judge’s ruling (which will certainly be appealed anyway) basically said that the FTC exceeded its Congressional mandate in setting up the no-call list.
“Admittedly, the elimination of telemarketing fraud and the prohibition against deceptive and abusive telemarketing acts or practices are significant public concerns,” the court wrote in its order. “However, an administrative agency’s power to regulate in the public interest must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress.”
It’s pretty certain to me that Congress, if the ruling stands, will make that mandate crystal clear. Nobody wants to be seen on the side of phone solicitors, campaign contributions notwithstanding. The FTC here was acting on law that Congress had made for the FCC; given the tangle of agencies and overlapping jurisdictions in such matters, it seems to me that the FTC was acting properly. The judge, clearly, disagreed.
One interesting factoid I ran across on the CNN newscrawl at lunch, by the bye, was that the DMA claims its members will lose $50 billion in sales if the regulations are enacted. The number is nonsense, of course, since folks who sign up for the DNC list are unlikely to be buying much by phone in the first place. As well, it’s not like the money is going to somehow evaporate from the economy — it will either be saved (providing capital) or spent (providing jobs). But it’s great scaremongering.
Went down to the local John Elway Subaru dealership this evening and drove around Impreza WRXs.