[Stefan Stackhouse]

Well, let's say you're a client of a brokerage firm. How am I supposed to stay in touch with you? Wouldn't it even be illegal for me to call and ask you? If you do business with phone company x, shouldn't they be able to call you and offer you new services, or discounts on calling plans that they know you'd benefit from? I had my phone company call me and inform me about a plan that fit my needs, I saved money and was happy to hear from them.

Our local electric company has a deal where if we have an outage, we call a number to report it, and then we get a callback when power is restored. Under the proposed DNC rules, the power company wouldn't be able to make those callbacks to anyone on the DNC registry unless they have previously given the power company prior permission -- permission which would then give the power company the right to call them to pitch any product they wanted. A lucrative new business opportunity for our power company!

The loopholes and unintended consequences of this hastilly devised and ill-considered measure stagger the imagination.

[kevkrom]

Under the proposed DNC rules, the power company wouldn't be able to make those callbacks to anyone on the DNC registry unless they have previously given the power company prior permission

Nope -- there is an exception made for calls to existing clients or customers. Not to mention that such a call would not be a marketing call in the first place.