In some good news for consumers, the FTC has decided to get more serious about the Telemarketing Sales Rules that govern telemarketing phone calls. The decision is pretty readable, but the salient points are after the jump.

The biggest thing here is the banning of all prerecorded messages in cases of everything except charitable organizations (and sadly, those who shill for them) and, of course, the political exemption.

Beyond that, they're also putting in a requirement that all pre-recorded sales messages have an opt-out keypress within the first seconds of the message, which should make it easier to get off of these lists.

If you really want to get these calls, then you can request, in writing, that you be put back on the list... thinking that's not happening...

As usual, the regulators think that these calls aren't made by computer, so they're giving the annoying folks another year to clean up their act, but the opt-out provision will be required by December 1, 2008.