| Comment Number: | OL-109889 |
| Received: | 12/12/2004 5:40:03 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Michael Katz |
| State: | CA |
| 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 urge the Commission to reject the proposed amendment and deny the petition. Adopting either proposal would harm the public interest by invading consumers' privacy and exposing them to a flood of nuisance calls. I urge the Commission to instead: (1) Ban all prerecorded telemarketing calls under any circumstances, from any source -- including nonprofit institutions and political campaigns. Robot dialers are a huge nuisance and a huge invasion of households' privacy. (2) Redefine "established business relationship," for the purpose of telemarketing regulations, to clearly require that consumers explicitly "opt in" to receive marketing communications from each specific corporate division or affiliate. Entities without such an explicit "opt-in" authorization should be banned from violating Do Not Call requests. Both of these changes would better protect consumers' privacy. They would also benefit businesses, by allowing wanted messages to more readily reach consumers without having to contend with unwanted clutter.