Steve Buyer: “yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ruled that the Federal Trade Commission did not…”

“yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ruled that the Federal Trade Commission did not have the authority to create a national ``do-not-call'' registry. While the Court can and did make legal arguments to support its ruling, what it cannot and should not deny is the will of the people. And the will of the people when it comes to a national ``do not call list'' is strong and vigilant. Since June, when the registry was first opened, over 50 million phone numbers have been submitted to the FTC registry. People are simply fed up with telemarketers interrupting their meals by offering vacations or more credit cards. In my home state of Indiana, almost 1.5 million phones are registered for the Telephone Privacy program. That represents almost 58 percent of our state, meaning that 3.5 million Hoosiers have chosen to reduce unwanted telemarketing calls. A survey in Indiana found that those on the Indiana Telephone Privacy list had their calls reduced from an average of twelve per week to only one per week. Indiana's Telephone Privacy law works. One important feature of the Indiana law is that it contains very few exemptions. In fact, Indiana's law has fewer exemptions than the FCC and FTC rules. While we have permitted these agencies to provide more exemptions on the Federal level, it must be made clear that Congress does not intend to interfere with statutes, like Indiana's, that choose to tighten these loopholes.”