Passed by Congress and officially made law by then-President George H.W. Bush in 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)(102-243) was an amendment of the Communications Act. The latter was established decades earlier in 1934. The TCPA’s primary intention was to (and is to) regulate and restrain telemarketers (or any other person or entity that performs phone solicitations) from abusing private individuals and organizations’ telephone lines (including cell phones), voice mail systems, and fax machines dealing with solicited messages. The FCC enforces the TCPA.
Essentially, the TCPA forbids telemarketers:
• From calling homes before 8 A.M. or after 9 P.M. (local time)
• From using “artificial voices” or recordings of voices in solicitations
• From sending unsolicited text messages via cell phone
• From sending unsolicited faxes that from equipment that does not meet federal guidelines and/or does not have the proper identification on the message (see below)
The Act also mandates that telemarketers:
• Give their name, the name of the person or organization that’s being called on behalf of, and their address or telephone number
• Label all fax messages at the top or bottom of every page with the time, date, sender’s name, the person or entity for whom they are sending the message, their address or phone number
• Must keep a Do-Not-Call (DNC) list and must abide by it by not calling persons or entities on the list for five years.
Additional Amendments to the TCPA
The TCPA was subsequently amended with the National Do Not Call Registry in 2003. The National Do Not Call Registry made it easier for people to register with the federal database, instead of having to notify each and every solicitor of their status on the List. Additionally, in 2005, Congress added the Junk Fax Prevention Act to the TCPA, which prevents telemarketers from transmitting unsolicited advertisement faxes.