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Do Not Call List
Aired September 25, 2003 - 13:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Can lawmakers cut through the static fast enough? That's the question that we're asking, to restore the do not call list and unplug unwanted calls by next week as planned.
Joining me to talk about that now and how this all affects you is Chris Murray, legislative counsel and spokesperson for Consumer's Union.
Chris, good to see you.
CHRIS MURRAY, CONSUMER'S UNION: Thank you for having me, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: It's a pleasure. All right. Let's talk about -- obviously, you've got 50 million phone numbers here, people are speaking out. They want this list to go through. More than likely it probably will. In the meantime, as we wait for the decision, what happens with the list?
MURRAY: Well, I just got a phone call about five minutes ago that somewhere, 10 or 15 minutes ago, the House of Representatives just passed a bill, 412-8, pretty large margin, to actually go ahead and give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to do this. So the court case notwithstanding, it looks like Congress may go ahead and take care of this very, very quickly. I think a similar measure is going to be introduced into the Senate probably later today. If the House is any indication, it will be passed within the next 24 hours.
PHILLIPS: But in the meantime, it's unenforceable, correct?
MURRAY: That's correct. The list was supposed to go into place October 1st. As you said, 50 million people signed up in the first couple of months. And they're all expecting that, come October 1st, they're going to have a little peace at the dinner table. Now, this judge -- a federal district judge in Oklahoma -- said that the Federal Trade Commission didn't have the authority to do this, notwithstanding the fact that Congress said, here's $16 million to implement the list. Apparently that's not enough authority to do it. So they challenged that -- this is the last in a series of hail Mary's that the American Teleservices Association has tried to put up to make sure the do not call list goes into effect. But it look like this is going to happen, and happen pretty quickly.
PHILLIPS: All right, now let's just take it back for a minute. Yesterday, things were happening sort of quickly. What was the legal basis behind the judge's decision yesterday? It was something between FCC and FTC. Could you just kind of sort that out for us?
MURRAY: Sure. There's the Federal Trade Commission and then there's the Federal Communications Commission. And the Federal Communications Commission has traditionally had a little bit more authority in telecommunications. It makes sense. They, in 1992, when they first took a whack at putting a do not call list into place, they put into place what we currently have right now, which is you have to opt out company by company. In other words, every salesperson gets a bite at the apple when they call you. If you ask to be put on their do not call list, they have to honor that.
Now, of course, you can imagine if you put a do not call list on -- excuse me, a do not solicit sign on your front door and everybody came by and they got one bite at the apple, that would be rather annoying.
So what the Federal Trade Commission here said was, look, we think consumers want this, and we're going to work with the Federal Communications Commission to get this done. They did work on it together, to craft some of the exemptions, to make sure that, for instance, nonprofits can still call, to make sure we can still do polling for elections. And I think it was actually a very carefully crafted balance.
The telemarketers disagreed. They challenged it. And at least this judge agreed with them.
Now, that's going to go to the appellate court. But as I said, I don't think that's even going to be necessary, because Congress is probably going to overturn this.
PHILLIPS: All right, well, Chris, we got a number of e-mails, as you can imagine. Let's get right to them. This one coming from Tucson, Arizona, and it says, "Before the national do not call list, was created, a person had the opportunity to tell a telemarketer that they wanted to be put on that telemarketers do not call list. Does the national do not call list make the old method obsolete? What are the telemarketers that are supposedly exempt form observing the national do not call list?"
That's a good point, because there's a lot of loopholes.
MURRAY: Well, that's a good question. Basically this is going to be a single place, rather than -- as it worked before -- where you had to opt out every time somebody called you. This is going to be one single federal list that says, please don't bother this particular individual.
Now as to whether or not you can say do not solicit to -- or rather, do not call to the nonprofits, et cetera, that have an exemption, I believe the answer is yes, that you can say, please put me on your do not call list, and especially put me on the list that will prevent you from sharing that with any affiliates, you know, from any third parties that might want to use the list.
Excuse me. But I believe that this is going to go ahead and be one single place that people can go to have people stop bothering them at the dinner table.
PHILLIPS: All right, let's squeeze one more in there. D.W. from New Hampshire has this question: "How are you going to stop telemarketing companies from simply moving their base of operations to Canada? Already, all sorts of telephone scams originate there, away from U.S. jurisdiction. My son goes to school in Montreal. Telemarketing firms there are recruiting like crazy for exporting jobs without eliminate the calls."
MURRAY: Well, that is probably a real problem here, but at least insofar as U.S. firms are concerned, this is going to help eliminate a lot of unwanted calls. As far as outside companies go, I'm not actually sure what's going to apply to them. I believe that you can go ahead and opt out of those firm's list, but it may be more difficult to enforce.
PHILLIPS: All right, Chris Murray, legislative counsel, spokesperson for Consumer's Union. We're going to follow the decision, I guess the second part to the decision, coming down sometime today.
Thanks, Chris.
MURRAY: Thanks for having me.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired September 25, 2003 - 13:23 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Can lawmakers cut through the static fast enough? That's the question that we're asking, to restore the do not call list and unplug unwanted calls by next week as planned.
Joining me to talk about that now and how this all affects you is Chris Murray, legislative counsel and spokesperson for Consumer's Union.
Chris, good to see you.
CHRIS MURRAY, CONSUMER'S UNION: Thank you for having me, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: It's a pleasure. All right. Let's talk about -- obviously, you've got 50 million phone numbers here, people are speaking out. They want this list to go through. More than likely it probably will. In the meantime, as we wait for the decision, what happens with the list?
MURRAY: Well, I just got a phone call about five minutes ago that somewhere, 10 or 15 minutes ago, the House of Representatives just passed a bill, 412-8, pretty large margin, to actually go ahead and give the Federal Trade Commission the authority to do this. So the court case notwithstanding, it looks like Congress may go ahead and take care of this very, very quickly. I think a similar measure is going to be introduced into the Senate probably later today. If the House is any indication, it will be passed within the next 24 hours.
PHILLIPS: But in the meantime, it's unenforceable, correct?
MURRAY: That's correct. The list was supposed to go into place October 1st. As you said, 50 million people signed up in the first couple of months. And they're all expecting that, come October 1st, they're going to have a little peace at the dinner table. Now, this judge -- a federal district judge in Oklahoma -- said that the Federal Trade Commission didn't have the authority to do this, notwithstanding the fact that Congress said, here's $16 million to implement the list. Apparently that's not enough authority to do it. So they challenged that -- this is the last in a series of hail Mary's that the American Teleservices Association has tried to put up to make sure the do not call list goes into effect. But it look like this is going to happen, and happen pretty quickly.
PHILLIPS: All right, now let's just take it back for a minute. Yesterday, things were happening sort of quickly. What was the legal basis behind the judge's decision yesterday? It was something between FCC and FTC. Could you just kind of sort that out for us?
MURRAY: Sure. There's the Federal Trade Commission and then there's the Federal Communications Commission. And the Federal Communications Commission has traditionally had a little bit more authority in telecommunications. It makes sense. They, in 1992, when they first took a whack at putting a do not call list into place, they put into place what we currently have right now, which is you have to opt out company by company. In other words, every salesperson gets a bite at the apple when they call you. If you ask to be put on their do not call list, they have to honor that.
Now, of course, you can imagine if you put a do not call list on -- excuse me, a do not solicit sign on your front door and everybody came by and they got one bite at the apple, that would be rather annoying.
So what the Federal Trade Commission here said was, look, we think consumers want this, and we're going to work with the Federal Communications Commission to get this done. They did work on it together, to craft some of the exemptions, to make sure that, for instance, nonprofits can still call, to make sure we can still do polling for elections. And I think it was actually a very carefully crafted balance.
The telemarketers disagreed. They challenged it. And at least this judge agreed with them.
Now, that's going to go to the appellate court. But as I said, I don't think that's even going to be necessary, because Congress is probably going to overturn this.
PHILLIPS: All right, well, Chris, we got a number of e-mails, as you can imagine. Let's get right to them. This one coming from Tucson, Arizona, and it says, "Before the national do not call list, was created, a person had the opportunity to tell a telemarketer that they wanted to be put on that telemarketers do not call list. Does the national do not call list make the old method obsolete? What are the telemarketers that are supposedly exempt form observing the national do not call list?"
That's a good point, because there's a lot of loopholes.
MURRAY: Well, that's a good question. Basically this is going to be a single place, rather than -- as it worked before -- where you had to opt out every time somebody called you. This is going to be one single federal list that says, please don't bother this particular individual.
Now as to whether or not you can say do not solicit to -- or rather, do not call to the nonprofits, et cetera, that have an exemption, I believe the answer is yes, that you can say, please put me on your do not call list, and especially put me on the list that will prevent you from sharing that with any affiliates, you know, from any third parties that might want to use the list.
Excuse me. But I believe that this is going to go ahead and be one single place that people can go to have people stop bothering them at the dinner table.
PHILLIPS: All right, let's squeeze one more in there. D.W. from New Hampshire has this question: "How are you going to stop telemarketing companies from simply moving their base of operations to Canada? Already, all sorts of telephone scams originate there, away from U.S. jurisdiction. My son goes to school in Montreal. Telemarketing firms there are recruiting like crazy for exporting jobs without eliminate the calls."
MURRAY: Well, that is probably a real problem here, but at least insofar as U.S. firms are concerned, this is going to help eliminate a lot of unwanted calls. As far as outside companies go, I'm not actually sure what's going to apply to them. I believe that you can go ahead and opt out of those firm's list, but it may be more difficult to enforce.
PHILLIPS: All right, Chris Murray, legislative counsel, spokesperson for Consumer's Union. We're going to follow the decision, I guess the second part to the decision, coming down sometime today.
Thanks, Chris.
MURRAY: Thanks for having me.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
