Do Not Call list under attack, activists say

Raney said telemarketing firms need a uniform standard to follow. Implementing rules from 50 different states is costly and unfair, he said. His law firm, Copilevitz & Canter, also represents the ad-hoc alliance which has appealed to the FCC for pre-emption. In that petition, the group describes complicated and varied state laws. In Louisiana, for example, telemarketing calls are illegal on Acadian Day and Huey P. Long day.

"A patchwork quilt is not a good idea," Raney said. "The FCC needs to say to the states, 'This is the standard with regard to national telemarketing calls.' "

Tom Kelly, spokesman for JPMorgan Chase & Co., said his company is currently calling existing customers with new pitches, and a uniform national law is only sensible.

"If they have a credit card with us, we want to talk to them about a mortgage that's being offered," he said.  "The issue really is we're trying to do business in 50 states, and having individual rules in each state makes it much more complicated."

An extra layer of protection
The hugely popular federal Do Not Call list — which has been joined by 80 million Americans — is jointly administered by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. The list, 12 years in the making, is rooted in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.

Last month, the FCC asked for public comments on the issue of state pre-emption, which are due July 29. FCC spokeswoman Rosemary Kimball said she could not guess when the commission might rule on the issue.

"There's no way of predicting. It depends on the volume of comments and the complexities of the issues," she said.

Jen Schwartzman, spokeswoman for the FTC, said she did not share EPIC's concerns that pre-emption would lead to a sharp increase in telemarketing calls. The federal list is working well, she said, and consumers who are contacted by companies they have done business with can always ask to be removed from their list.

"There is that extra layer of protection," she said.  "You can always request to be taken off their call list and they have to comply. Having an existing business relationship is not a life sentence to get telemarketing calls."

A step backward
But Indiana's attorney general Carter said such a requirement unfairly puts the onus back on consumers again.

"If you put that burden on citizens, they are back where they were five years ago. ... That's quite a step backward from where we are today," he said.  "We think we have prevented over 1 billion phone calls. Some of them are cold calls. But many would have been people calling existing customers to make new sales pitches."

Taking states out of the telemarketing rules game would give less teeth to do-not-call laws, said Terence McElroy, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The agency enforces Florida's Do Not Call law, which was the first in the nation.

"I know our state and other states have been aggressively enforcing their laws," he said. Florida has filed more than 100 lawsuits against violators.  "If the federal law were to stand alone, unless there was aggressive enforcement, it wouldn't be terribly effective."

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