FRANKFORT — A limited version of a bill to enable people to block telephone sales solicitors was passed by the Kentucky Senate on Thursday.

        It would allow people 70 and older to have their names placed on a “zero call” list maintained by the attorney general's consumer protection division.

        The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would apply to consumers of any age. It offers two lists — zero call, which would be nearly literal, and “no call,” which would limit but not eliminate telephone solicitations.

        Attorney General Ben Chandler, who has taken on telemarketing as a cause, said he hoped the General Assembly would opt for the House version. The Senate bill “unfortunately does not protect the rights of Kentuckians who are under 70 years old,” Mr. Chandler said in a statement.

        The bill sponsor, Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, insisted it was “legislation with teeth” that would protect the elderly from “telephone predators.”

        Her mother was “inundated with these calls” before she died and would have been “scammed” into financial ruin had other family members not intervened, Ms. Kerr, R-Lexington, said in a floor speech.

        But in fact, “zero call” in the Senate bill actually means something less. It would exempt merchants or even telemarketers who solicit people to attend sales presentations but do not close the deal themselves.

        Also exempted would be merchants who make calls directly rather than through a telemarketer. That was the gist of a floor amendment that passed 19-18. “This is what I call a loophole,” Sen. Marshall Long, proponent of a more stringent bill, said during floor debate.

        Sen. Julie Denton, an outspoken defender of the telemarketing industry, said the bill was “a knee-jerk reaction” to an annoyance and would do nothing to reduce crime.

        “Criminals are criminals. They're already committing fraud,” said Ms. Denton, R-Louisville. The bill “is not going to do anything to deter them.”

        Ms. Denton said the General Assembly should instead study the issue before its 2002 session. She ventured an amendment to that effect, but only she voted for it.

        It seemed unlikely that either chamber would accept the other's version of the bill and that conferees would attempt to negotiate a compromise.

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