Analysis

Sponsor: Representative DeHart
Topic: Telephone Commercial Messages

Position: The department has taken no formal position on the bill.

Background: Current law prohbits the use of a recorded advertising message in a telephone call to an individual at home unless the individual has knowingly and voluntarily requested or consented to the call or given his or her telephone number to the caller. When an individual attempts to hang up on such a call, it is not unusual for the recording to continue to run. Such a situation can result in a person missing calls or having to wait to make an outgoing call until the message ends or the contact is otherwise broken. The delay in making outgoing calls can be particularly frustrating and potentially significant if someone needs to call "911" as a constituent of the bill sponsor did. Technologically, it is apparently very feasible for the entity making the call to end the message when the receiving party hangs up.

Bill Content: The bill amends Public Act 47 of 1980 to place additional restrictions on the delivery of recorded commercial advertisements over the telephone. Business and toll-free telephone service subscribers as well as individual telephone subscribers would be included in the act's ban on delivering commercial telephone advertising messages without consent. The bill also provides that recorded commercial advertising must end or otherwise free a subscriber's telephone line for incoming and outgoing calls immediately upon termination of the call by the subscriber. The amount of damages that a subscriber can recover in civil action against a caller is increased from $250 to $1,000.

Arguments

For: It is annoying and inconvenient enough for people to receive telephone calls which deliver a recorded commercial advertising message without subjecting them to temporary termination of their telephone service while the message continues to play after they hang up. If a person needs to make an emergency call while such a recording continues to run, this situation can have serious consequences.

The situation addressed by the bill can also be critical for small businesses whose customers cannot reach them because a taped message continues to play. By adding businesses and toll-free numbers to the list of subscribers who must give consent before such advertising may be delivered the bill affords these entities the same protection as given to residential customers.

Against: Requiring immediate termination of the call may be unrealistic unless "immediate" is defined as 3 to 5 seconds. There was some discussion of this issue in committee. A three to five second delay may be necessary for technological reasons. GTE has an even longer built in delay but indicated in committee that five seconds would be workable.

Fiscal Impact: The bill will have no fiscal impact on state government.