| Comment Number: | OL-110736 |
| Received: | 12/19/2004 1:45:52 PM |
| Organization: | private citizen |
| Commenter: | Jerry Ehrlick |
| State: | FL |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The establishment of a national Do No Call list by the FTC was a very welcome and over-due effort that truly served the public well. Whether or not the courts completely agree will likely always be at question because their foundation for judgement is The Constitution, written long before the threat of privacy invasion was so massively possible as it is today. American citizens overwhelmingly endorsed FTC's bold action by quickly and positively responding to the invitation for inclusion in the list. One of the most glaring oversights with the national Do Not Call list was witnessed the weeks leading up to the November 2004 elections when no telephone owner was spared the harrassment of political solicitations, most of which were prerecorded, redundant and counter-productive. Many of us simply "hung up" as soon as the first few words of the message were uttered which resulted in nothing beneficial for any party and placed a huge capacity overload on each community's telephone services. Obviously the overwhelming pressure from sitting politicians before the national Do Not Call list was formulated directly influenced the decission to exclude political solicitation from any restriction but the reasoning behind that decission was purely parochial and did not serve the public interest. Political solicitation, in fact, should be restricted just as any other form of unsolicited, personally offensive privacy invasion. By prerecording their sales pitch telemarketers are actually reducing their operating costs but the price for that benefit to them is the continued harrassment of the American citizenry. Prerecorded solicitation in any form should not be permitted to escape the restrictions of the National Do Not Call Registry.