• by Wayne Friedman , December 14, 2005

DirecTV has been penalized for overly aggressive marketing. The News Corp.-satellite distributor will pay more than $10 million in fines for violation of a number of telephone marketing practices, including the federally mandated "do-not-call" phone lists.

The fines come in two parts. The most recent comes from settling a complaint yesterday lodged by the Justice Department for the Federal Trade Commission.

DirecTV agreed to pay $5.3 million in fines. On Monday, DirecTV agreed to pay $5 million to New York and 21 other states, and restitution to consumers, to settle complaints against its marketing practices.

The do-not-call list was launched in 2003, and now has 110 million phone numbers of consumers. Telemarketers are able to download the DNC list at www.donotcall.gov--all so they will avoid calling these numbers.

DirecTV denied any violations of the telemarketing rules, but paid the money and agreed not to repeat the unwanted calls.

The FTC said there were thousands of violations in reference to the DirecTV marketing efforts.