telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (08/01/90)
The United States House of Representatives approved a bill Monday, July 30 that would allow phone subscribers to keep incoming junk faxes and automated phone sales calls off their lines. The legislation, approved by a voice vote, would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to set up a national registry of telephone subscribers who object to unsolicited sales messages delivered orally by a computer, or in printed form by a fax machine. The FCC would also establish penalties for advertisers who call people on the list. Solicitations by charitable, political and religious organizations would be exempt from the ban. Telephone subscribers, either private individuals or businesses, could specify they do not wish to receive advertising by facsimile machines or automatically dialed, prerecorded telephone solicitations. The legislation was crafted in cooperation with the Federal Communications Commission, various telepone companies, and representatives of the direct marketing industry, said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass), one of the sponsors of the bill. The Senate must still approve the bill, and the Senate version may make some changes. The new law, if passed, will *NOT* prohibit live sales calls, but only the automated kind, along with fax calls. The assumption is that the called party can instruct an actual, live human-being sales person to terminate the call and not call in the future. Patrick Townson
jgro@apldbio.com (Jeremy Grodberg) (08/06/90)
In article <10307@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >The United States House of Representatives approved a bill... >[which] would authorize the Federal >Communications Commission to set up a national registry of telephone >subscribers who object to unsolicited sales messages delivered orally >by a computer, or in printed form by a fax machine. >Solicitations by charitable, political and religious organizations >would be exempt from the ban. [...] To be an effective deterrent, this list of phone numbers would have to be public. I can just see it providing a national hit list for telemarketers working for "charitable, political and religious organizations." Who is going to want to give out their unlisted phone numbers for this, if it ends up *inviting* solicitations from every non-profit fundraiser in the country? I remember my training as a door-to-door political fundraiser (canvasser) that I was instructed to ignore "no solicitations" signs, because a) I wasn't selling anything, and b) those signs were put up by people with low sales resistance, and thus would be a better-than-average source of donations. Regardless of the accuracy of those justifications, I can tell you that they are widely held beliefs among sales pros. Isn't this list a formula for this kind of abuse? Jeremy Grodberg jgro@apldbio.com [Moderator's Note: Where you are missing the point is that the charitable, political and religious ones can call *anyway*. And the law is directed at automated dialing, a technique which does not rely on a printed list of numbers, but simply dials from 0001 to 9999 on each exchange. Everyone *except* the exempted categories would have to program their autodialers to skip the requested numbers. PT]
PCHROMCZ@drew.bitnet (Alec) (08/08/90)
In article <10307@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >bill... [which] would authorize the FCC to set up a national registry >of telephone subscribers who object to unsolicited sales messages... >Solicitations by charitable, political and religious organizations >would be exempt from the ban. Well that's really USELESS: the people who I especially *DON'T* want to hear from are charitable, political, and religious organizations. -*- Alec -*- PCHROMCZ@drunivac.bitnet PCHROMCZ@drunivac.drew.edu ...!rutgers!njin!drew!drunivac!PCHROMCZ