Tuesday October 7
Rational Thinking On Telemarketing
Starting in late September, the federal courts completely screwed up the law on privacy and telemarketing, deciding that the Federal Trade Commission's "Do Not Call" registry was, first, unauthorized, and second, in violation of the First Amendment. Today the 10th Circuit stayed those decisions, holding that "there is a substantial likelihood that the FTC will be able to show ... that the list directly advances the government's substantial interest and is narrowly tailored." [yahoonews.com]. Finally, a little sanity is brought to the law.
The Washington Post calls the situation "Do-Not-Call Recalled," which is cute but a little misleading. What's been recalled are the asinine decisions by decrepit old judges hand-picked by the Direct Marketing Association to assure stupid rulings favoring local calling center business over the privacy rights of consumers nationwide. DMA says the court of appeals "appears to allow" the FTC to proceed with its plans. So, these guys can't read either!! What "appears" true is that the telemarketers still refuse to admit that consumers hate them and that their entire business depends on being so obnoxious and misleading that people are bullied into submission. The courts have closed them down, at last.
Posted by glenn at Labels Are Important
In another stunning example of judicial myopia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held that cable modem service is "telecommunications," and thus subject to sharing with independent ISPs. Big Win For Brand X [Forbes.com]. The issue here is not that the court reversed the Federal Communications Commission -- which happens all the time, with good reason -- but rather that the Communications Act bases regulatory treatment on the categorization of services. If the court had found, like the FCC, that cable modem services are "information" services because they connect users to the Internet, that would have led to the opposite result.
This illustrates that the rules governing communications, written before the Internet explosion of the mid-1990s, hardly make sense in an era of technological convergence. In short, the rules are broken. For a more in-depth examination, see the presentations I have made on this subject, as long ago as 1996. Then I called this penchant for labels and the conflicting technolgoical and regulatory histories of circuit switched (telephone) and packet switched (Internet) networks a "war of two worlds." Some things never change!!