Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) yesterday said he’s drafting legislation that would ban the sending of unsolicited advertisements to cell phones.
The first-term central New Jersey Congressman expects to introduce the as-yet-untitled bill early next month.
He said the legislation was prompted by numerous, but unspecified, complaints his office received from constituents and Congressional staff members who have been receiving the calls.
All of the calls were from Plugout.com, an Internet distributor of aftermarket wireless communications accessories based in Fort Lee, NJ.
Holt, who described the firm’s unsolicited cell phone calls as a “new form of Spam,” a term usually associated with unsolicited computer e-mail, said its president, Rudy Temiz ignored a written request to immediately end the calls, which he said were “an irritating and outrageous invasion of privacy.”
Temiz, who yesterday claimed he had just received Holt’s letter, denied that his unsolicited cell phone calls were an invasion of anyone’s privacy. “If anyone doesn’t like the message we send, they can simply erase it and we won’t take it personally,” he told Direct NEWSLINE.
Temiz also said he viewed the calls “as a direct way of marketing our products and getting our word out there.”
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