No one likes to be interrupted by telemarketers; so it’s understandable that Congress issued the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) back in 1991 to regulate abusive practices.
But as we wrote earlier this month, this now 3 decades old law is severely out of date and fails to provide clarity on automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS), which means that most contemporary technological devices – like smart phones, tablets, and laptops – can now be classified as an auto-dialer, even though Congress never intended to regulate these technologies under the statute.
While most of us are not telemarketers, many of us do need to rely on predictive dialing in order to reach employees and customers in an efficient manner. And here in lies the problem.
We were glad to see that TechFreedom, a think tank aimed at promoting technology to improve daily life, has also joined the conversation. Last week, they offered their opinion by submitting comments on a petition calling on the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) to clarify the definition of “an autodialer.” According to TechFreedom, “In the FCC’s rush to protect consumers, they lost sight of Congressional intent, which was to specifically ban only calling systems that randomly or sequentially dialed numbers which may not even exist, or might belong to public safety users whose systems become unavailable when deluged with telemarketing cold calls.”
As TechFreedom points out in their comment, the autodialer definition should evolve, just as the technology it regulates. An updated definition would encourage innovation in the space, instead of squashing progress. “Unfortunately,” they explain,“when entrepreneurs and designers of dialing equipment rose to Congress’s challenge [after the TCPA], delivering such pro-consumer, pro-public-safety innovations, the Commission struck them down.” This new review of the rule, provides the FCC the opportunity to right this wrong.
Once again, it’s time to streamline government, modernize our laws, and ensure the regulatory state doesn’t unduly burden economic growth and innovation. Hopefully the FCC can at last provide clarity to businesses and consumers, through a tightened definition of an autodialer.
