L. 103–297) is a federal law in the United States aimed at protecting consumers from telemarketing deception and abuse.
[1] After the passage of the act, the Federal Trade Commission is required to (1) define and prohibit deceptive telemarketing practices; (2) keep telemarketers from practices a reasonable consumer would see as being coercive or invasions of privacy; (3) set restrictions on the time of day and night that unsolicited calls can be made to consumers; (4) to require the nature of the call to be disclosed at the start of any unsolicited call that is made with the purpose of trying to sell something.
[3] With this being stated it is easy to see how there has been a rise in telemarketing fraud, which was found to be of such a magnitude that the Federal Trade Commission needed more resources to deal with it.
[4] However, with the establishment of these provisions, companies objected to it and some filed suits arguing their rights as a business were being infringed upon.
[5] In April 2018, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the FTC had not violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued a 2016 staff letter reversing the conclusion of a 2009 staff letter that had found use of soundboard technology did not violated the act.