“This is the second notice that the warranty on your vehicle has expired.” That might be the robocall with which a lot of people are most familiar. Well, those were already illegal, but now the rest of robocalls are going to be just as banned. The Federal Trade Commission has revised the Telemarketing Sales Rule so that people who want to make a profit off of you won’t be able to use prerecorded messages to get you there. According to the FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz (who seems very fond of alliteration),

This bombardment of prerecorded pitches, senseless solicitations, and malicious marketing will be illegal. If consumers think they’re being harassed by robocallers, they need to let us know, and we will go after them.

These changes are such that only the really annoying stuff is illegal. If a business is using an automated message to just convey some information, they’re not going to get in trouble. So your dentist is not gong to jail for that message telling you to come in for a cleaning.

A law is only effective for prevention if enforcement is likely to happen, but this probably won’t be a …

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