Consumers are cheering the comeuppance in recent days given two irritants that rub consumers the wrong way.

The highest court in the land upheld the federal Do Not Call Registry and the feds recently shut down a work-at-home spam scam.

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand by refusing to hear a lower court's ruling that consumers' right to privacy holds sway over telemarketers' right to free speech when it comes to the federal Do Not Call registry.

The American Teleservices Association, Mainstream Marketing Services Inc. and TMG Marketing Inc. asked the Supreme Court to hear the case after the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the Do Not Call registry, which now contains 62 million phone numbers that telemarketers are prohibited from calling.

Among its comments, the appeals court had ruled "We hold that the do-not-call registry is a valid commercial speech regulation because it directly advances the government's important interests in safeguarding personal privacy and reducing the danger of telemarketing abuse..."

The plaintiffs had argued that the Do Not Call list violated Constitutional free-speech rights because it allows most charitable or political calls but not commercial solicitations once a consumer has joined the list.

The Supreme Court let the ruling stand without comment.

Since June of 2003, the Do Not Call registry has allowed anyone to add their phone number or numbers to the registry to be rid of most unwanted telemarketing calls for five years, after which they can renew their request. Violators can be fined up to $11,000 for each illegal call. A year after the law became effective, nearly a half million consumers had filed complaints, but studies revealed most consumers were happy with the reduced number of telemarketing calls as most telemarketers complied with the new law.

The Supreme Court response should mean even further compliance.

Representing the government, Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement said the Do Not Call rule is not a government-imposed ban on speech, but protection from the growing intrusion telemarketing has caused.

"The regulations establish a framework to enforce consumers' own choices about commercial speech and telephone privacy in their homes," he said.

Work-At-Home Spam Scam Canned

Meanwhile in its effort to cure an even more painful consumer tension headache, the Federal Trade Commission petitioned the Jacksonville, FL U.S. District Court to temporarily shut down an unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE or "Spam") operation offering a work-at-home envelope stuffing operation.

Operating under a host of business aliases including Gregory Bryant & Associates, Dove Marketing Corp., GBA Publishing and Miracle Moms, the come-on promised $4 for each envelope stuffed at home in return for purchasing a $24.77 start-up kit.

Those who purchased the kit got a CD-ROM that explained how to get others to pay for an envelope stuffing kit and were charged another $24.95 after a 30-day trial period, the FTC charged.

The defendants, Gregory Bryant, Jr., Nadira Bryant, also did not honor refund requests, the consumer-protection agency said.

They were in violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act because, the FTC charged, they faked return e-mail addresses and used deceptive subject lines like "Info You Have Requested" to trick recipients into opening the email. The operation also violated deceptive-business and telemarketing laws, the FTC said.

The vast majority of e-mail today is spam. It clogs e-mail boxes and costs billions a year to manage, in lost productivity and in related fraud and deception expenses.

CAN-SPAM Act, effective Jan. 1, 2004, prohibits spam senders from disguising their identity by using a false return address or misleading subject line. It also prohibits senders from harvesting addresses off websites and requires UCE to include a mechanism so recipients can indicate they do not want future mass e-mailing.

Violators can be fined millions of dollars and face imprisonment, but the law has been tough to enforce without a Do Not Spam Registry similar to the fed's Do Not Call registry for unwanted telephoned solicitations. The FTC receives more than 2 million samples of deceptive spam forwarded by computer users every week, but without adequate technology the FTC has been limited in enforcement actions and has gone after only a few of the largest national and international and most blatant spamming operations.

Published: October 13, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.