Can Robocalls Be Stopped? – The Regulatory Review

Scholars propose solutions to endless robocalling.

Receiving ominous calls about your cars expiring warranty, even if you do not own a vehicle? Or perhaps vaguely worded voicemails alerting you to an alleged debt you need to pay right away?

Telemarketingunsolicited calls or voicemails selling a product or serviceis not a new phenomenon. Telemarketing operations blossomed in the early 1980s as technology enabled businesses to dial more consumers at a lower cost. Pre-recorded messagesalso known as robocallscould reach thousands of phones at once. Companies invested in telemarketing, finding it to be a productive method for increasing sales, and over the course of the next decade the telemarketing industry grew nearly ten-fold.

In 1991, Congress enacted the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to try to curb the deluge of unsolicited calls to consumers. The problem had gotten so bad that former Senator Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), one of the sponsors of the TCPA, called robocalls the scourge of modern civilization.

Under the TCPA, the penalty for any robocall is $500 per call but can rise to $1,500 per call if petitioners can show in court that the robocallers willfully or knowingly violated the TCPA.

The TCPA was far from the death knell of the robocall, however. In another effort to stymie unsolicited calls, in 2003 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) teamed up with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to launch the National Do-Not-Call Registry. Now administered by the FTC, the National Do-Not-Call Registry allows consumers to add their telephone numbers to a national database specifying that those numbers are, in theory, off limits for certain types of unwanted calls.

But even with the TCPA and the National Do-Not-Call Registry, robocalling has continued to grow. Americans received over 100 billion robocalls in 2019, with the average consumer receiving an unwanted call nearly every day.

In a further effort to address the seemingly unfettered growth of robocalling, Congress enacted the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act) in 2019. The TRACED Act, among other things, increased penalties under the TCPA, gave the FCC greater authority to enforce the TCPA, and required the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice to work together to develop better methods for combatting robocalls.

In this weeks Saturday Seminar, scholars discuss telemarketing, robocalls, and the future of the TCPA.

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Can Robocalls Be Stopped? - The Regulatory Review