Comment Number: OL-100385
Received: 11/27/2004 10:12:11 AM
Organization:
Commenter: Joan Bennett
State: DE
Subject: Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 310
No Attachments

Comments:

I strongly oppose opening a loophole in the Do Not Call Registry to allow prerecorded advertisements. Unsolicited telephone advertising calls are a violation of privacy. Furthermore, the current Do Not Call law has its priorities backwards: If a company wants to use my private telephone line to try to sell me its product or service, it should first be required to obtain my permission to do so. I should not have to opt out; rather, I should have to opt in, if desired. If the Voice Mail Broadcasting Corp. cannot afford the cost of obtaining permission from its intended consumers, then it needs to withdraw its request for this amendment until it has found a way to pay for this important business responsibility. A company's freedom to advertise should not be allowed to undermine a citizens' right to privacy, especially the privacy of one's home. This privacy is an important FAMILY VALUE in an age when families have all too little uninterrupted time together as it is, with all family members in the workforce and work taking far more than 40 hours in the week. I am not at all opposed to advertising. I am a typical middle-class American consumer and appreciate ads when I have the option to choose to view or hear them. But free enterprise does not mean that the private citizens should be forced by law to subsidize the advertising cost of corporations by being legally required to grant them free access to citizens' private phone lines. This free access is not a small matter when, given the current state of telephone technology, with virtually free Internet calling potentially available to the voicemail marketing industry, our phone bill would be the main supporter of the very invasion of privacy that we find unacceptable. (Live-caller telemarketing at least has the virtue of providing employment for callers. Prerecorded messages mass mailed via internet on a virtually unlimited scale removes jobs.) In an era when the federal administration's relationship to industry is under investigation for fraud and mismanagement on too many fronts, it is especially important for the FTC to respect the intent of our constitution and laws when writing business legislation. Do not capitulate to pressures to open this loophole.