Quit calling and annoying me
David Vickrey
BIS/220
March 6, 2014
University of Phoenix

Quit calling and annoying me
Advances in Information Technology (IT) are meant to improve certain aspects within our lives. However, IT advances are resulting in a growing amount of ethical issues. Access to specific consumer demographic information basically became potential leads for telemarketing organizations. Once these leads were accessed, telemarketing businesses used call centers to push the products or services they sold. The ethical issues associated with IT advancements are ease of access to sensitive information, privacy, property and accuracy. Ethical issues due to advances in IT called for the creation of new acts to protect consumers. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 and the Do Not Call Implementation Act of 2003 are two examples of Acts created as direct results of IT advancements coupled with ethical issues.
The TCPA, enacted by Congress in 1991, restricts the making of telemarketing calls and the use of automatic telephone dialing systems and artificial or prerecorded voice messages. The rules apply to common carriers as well as to other marketers. In 1992, the Commission adopted rules to implement the TCPA, including the requirement that entities making telephone solicitations institute procedures for maintaining company-specific do-not-call lists. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revised its TCPA rules to establish, in coordination with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a national DO-NOT-CALL registry. The national registry is nationwide in scope, covers all telemarketers (with the exception of certain nonprofit organizations), and applies to both interstate and intrastate calls. To reduce the number of hang-up and dead air calls consumers experience, the Commissions telemarketing rules also contain restrictions on the use of auto dialers and requirements for transmitting caller ID information.
Most recently in 2012, the FCC revised its TCPA rules to require telemarketers (1) to obtain prior express written consent from consumers before robocalling them, (2) to no longer allow telemarketers to use an "established business relationship" to avoid getting consent from consumers when their home phones, and (3) to require telemarketers to provide an automated, interactive "opt-out" mechanism during each robocall so consumers can immediately tell the telemarketer to stop calling.
In general, people who have received telemarketing calls, unsolicited faxes, prerecorded calls, or autodialed calls to cell phones, may bring suit (in your local state court, including small claims court) against the person making those calls if they violate the TCPA. The statute provides statutory damages, generally from $500 to $1500 for each violation, which are paid to the consumer. A number of court challenges to parts of the TCPA have been brought. All failed.