[Porsche-O-Phile]

Same. Four beautiful, lovely words that make my heart go pitter-patter: "DO-NOT-CALL-LIST". Almost as good as the most beautiful three-word combination out there: "UNLISTED PHONE NUMBER".

The only things that'd make the do-not-call list better would be if:
(1) it could be expanded to allow businesses to add themselves to it.
(2) it could be expanded to protect people from getting calls from political advertisers and campaigners (currently exempted and frankly, more annoying than the telemarketers)
(3) it could be expanded so you didn't have to renew your "do not call" status every three years as you currently do (it'd be nice if it was a permanent/lifetime "opt out").

But to answer the question, yea - it's like spam. If one idiot in 100,000 responds to the crap, it's profitable for them and thus, the problem persists. The only permanent solution is for people to get collectively smart enough to stop responding to it to the point it's not longer profitable, or for the costs of delivering the message to increase to the point it's no longer profitable based on the success rate. Since people seem to be getting collectively stupider, rather than smarter I won't hold my breath for that to happen. Probably the only thing that'll make the problem go away is for wages in India to go up, at which point the telemarketers will simply be replaced by robots who work for free. . .

So the problem is (unfortunately) here to stay. Junk mail/spam/telemarketing - it's all the same crap. Just don't respond to it and "opt out" wherever possible. That's about all you can do.