Courts reinstate anti phone spam authority

Regardless of who's right on this from a legal perspective, the flood of public pressure on lawmakers makes this move inevitable. The people are tired of phone spam, period. It's the permission economy. And besides, people want their evening privacy where they can sit with their families and eat dinner in peace.

Law is ultimately an expression of the public will. Granted, the U.S. isn't a perfect society, but on this one, the public is going to get their way. Because if phone spam doesn't stop, the phones in the offices of members of Congress will start ringing off their hooks.

• A U.S. Court of Appeals panel has given the Federal Trade Commission the go-ahead to start enforcing its national do-not-call list.
• In a decision handed down this afternoon, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the 10th Circuit overturned a lower court's ruling that barred the agency from implementing its anti-telemarketing registry.
• "It appears that the FTC is likely to succeed on its argument" that the do-not-call list is not unconstitutional as a lower judge had ruled, the appeals court wrote today.
• Nottingham ruled that the registry is unconstitutional because it violated telemarketers' right to free speech since it blocks sales calls from companies but allows charitable organizations to continue to call the more than 50 million phone numbers for consumers who have signed on to the list.