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Supreme Court Backs Do-Not-Call List
The Ghetto Imp writes "According to CNN Money, the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of telemarketing companies, which were claiming that the do-not-call list violated their free speech rights. "
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Is this the same government that instituted the Patriot Act? (I know, some of it was recently declared unconstitutional, but the Act was put in place first.)
It's very nice that privacy is becoming a little more important these days, at least with the state governments, but please don't try to rewrite history.
That said, I'm very happy the do-not-call list will remain. It's cut down my dinner interruptions to almost zero.
The telemarketers argued that the list violated their commercial free-speech rights, that it unfairly did not apply to political and charitable solicitations, and that less restrictive regulations already allow consumers to block unwanted calls.
Well, before the list I was getting several calls a week and now I get none except "personalized messages from the President of the United States"... What regulations existed before that let me get off their list? Telling them I wanted on or off their list (whichever they interpreted as the correct way) or allowing me to have caller ID so that I could see "Unknown" show up and choose not to answer only to have them fill up my answering machine with a partial message?
I do agree that political messages should be disallowed. It would be different if the political messages were from non-profit groups representing a candidate that wasn't using tax dollars to campaign and wasn't bringing in MILLIONS of dollars of donated money to spread his name... I do NOT appreciate a 6pm phone call from "President Bush" where he tells me more of what I don't care to hear. I especially don't appreciate when it runs onto my answering machine messages too. I want to declare all the area outside of my phone line a Free Speech Zone. He's free to spread his message there where I don't have to listen to it.
How about next we ban companies from asking for your phone number every single chance they get? Buffalo Wild Wings asks when you order, Best Buy now asks when you buy something, we all know and love Shit Shack for what they used to do and probably still do, etc. They are asking for one reason and one reason only... To get your number so that they (and their subsidiaries) can call you even though you're on a DNC list. It's a fucking scam plain and simple. There's no reason to even bother with DNC legislation if we are going to allow gaping holes to exist to trick the population into handing over the information the scam artists need. If our government is really concerned with "protecting us from evil" they can start right fucking there.
Keep the god damn phone lines for opt-in calls only after all that's REALLY protecting my privacy right?
Now I wonder how long it will take before the majority of Americans have as well-formed an opinion, or as loud a collective voice, on issues like copyright and fair use of music, movies, software, etc. I fear it'll take as much in-your-face annoyance as telemarketers produced before anything really gets done (and maybe not even then, if corporate greed has anything to say about it...)
Cold calling is, in my mind, the equivalent of trespassing onto my property in order to say what I may or may not find useful (mostly the latter). It's an invasion of privacy rather than a free speech issue.
Frankly, I welcome this addition to the US law - we've had a similar system to it over here in the UK for some time, and it really does work.
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The telemarketers argued that the list violated their commercial free-speech rights, that it unfairly did not apply to political and charitable solicitations, and that less restrictive regulations already allow consumers to block unwanted calls.
Right to make money through badgering salespeople desparate for commission. Honestly, it's sad how abusive corporate America will be to earn that extra dollar. No consideration whatsoever.
-- n
... does the US Constitution give corporations the right to force people to listen to sales pitches against their will?!
We have a right to speak, but NO one has any obligation to listen!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
How does this help me, with the 5 phone calls a day while I'm waiting to hear back from places I've sent resumes in to?
They start with a recording, often asking me to call a 800 number based offshore. Sometimes a "press 1" to speak to a CSR... which connects me to some sleazy outfit that contracts out the telemarketing, or so they claim. "Sir, we did not call you!". I have an idea. Make telemarketing, for anything (charities too) a crime punishable by prison time. Make it illegal for phone companies to not provide true caller id... not this shit they pass off as the same.
Also, remember... you can always say no.
And currently they can deny you the sale as well (which has happened to me at Radio Shack and at restaurants).
When I am asked for my phone number I politely tell them "No thank you." This usually gets a negative response of "sir, I need your phone number to complete the sale." I then again tell them politely that I am not interested in giving out my phone number. Sometimes this will work and they will just cancel it or whatever but at other times it must receive managerial attention which includes them explaining why they need it, etc.
Why don't we just ban the practice outright for the reasons I stated above and be done with it. There is absolutely no fucking reason that Best Buy needs my phone number when I buy something. There is no reason that BW3 needs to know my phone number when I order 12 wings.
Maybe I'm missing something here?
At least for now, they can't call cell phones. So I don't even have a land line anymore. I didn't use it when I had it, and it's not like I can not have a cell phone for my line of work. My old land line only got calls from telemarketers, nobody who knew me used it.
Got Apathy?
Ever thought that B-dubs is asking you for your phone number in case you forget to pickup your takeout order? They certainly don't ask for it when you place an order in the resturaent. Come on people... pizza joints have been doing this for decades. Take off the tin foil hat.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
By having checks and balances with each branch able to step in and correct the other, we can keep things relatively in line. Not that things like PATRIOT don't get through, but *without* the checks and balances, there's a pretty good chance we'd see a lot more and a lot worse than that.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
People expect checks and balances to happen overnight..
The nasty bits of the USA PATRIOT act are on the way out.
Critics however just bitch and moan and complain and want it gone overnight. If that was possible, that'd be worse than what we have now.
Checks and balances exisits, but they are slow moving deliberative iterative processes.
The problem comes form people confusing the right to free speech with the right to be heard. One is not the other. The constution gaurentees that you are allowed to speak free of government restrictions (for the most part). You can make art how you like, scream your views out in the park, etc. What it does NOT gaurentee is that you'll have an audience for your expression. You are free to express yourself, and people are free to ignore you.
Advertisers aren't the only ones who have this problem, many people think that you should be required to listen to their views. I've had mall preachers (religious nuts that come to the large grassy area in the middle of campus called the mall) get angry and persue me when I ignore them (which does get them attention, but not the kind they want).
That's why the DNC list is constutional. IT's not stopping advertisers form expresisng themselves, it just says they aren't allowed to try and make you listen. You are still eprfectly free to call them and hear all about it.
Fwiw...
I hadn't been in Best Buy for over 5 years. Last week a power supply went out and had to get a replacement asap so BB was the only option.
During checkout the girl asked me for my phone number and, as I usually do when asked by any store, gave my fax number. Sure enough she said that the number was incorrect which had to mean that they were checking phone numbers against the credit card record.
At that point it could be argued that they could simply check a driver's license as proof but I had no desire whatsoever to argue with the manager.
So far there haven't been any calls. But I still cringe at the fact that for all intents and purposes giving a phone number could be used as an opt-in for their telemarketing. Even whether or not my theory is correct about how the number was checked.
If they people don't like this, the recourse is to change the Constitution.
The founding fathers realized that people can't be given too much power
I think you meant, "people must not be given too much power", because people certainly can be given too much power and so there need be preventions against them acquiring too much.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
What an amazing discovery: "Free speech" doesn't mean the freedom to talk to whoever you want, about whatever you want, whenever you want, as often as you want, by whatever medium you want, and ignore the person's pleas to go away.
...but if the phone rings when my sweetheart and I are enjoying out private time we ignore it and continue enjoying each other. I'd work on your skills in the sack if I were you and the phone ringing was of more importance to you than nookie.
Anyways, I'm surprised the judge even considered the telemarketer's case--It really isn't a free speech issue at all IMHO. The DNC list doesn't restrict what you may say, it merely restricts how you may deliver your message in order to protect the privacy of individuals.. They can still rent billboards, advertise on TV, run newspaper and radio ads, etc etc. Unless they can make a case that their message is more important than privacy (say, public safety, criminal investigation or election information) then they have no case.
They have no more right to solicit via telephone than they have to walk up and down a residential street at 2 AM with a bullhorn yelling "GET YER CITIFINANCIAL MASTERCARD HERE FOLKS!!! ONLY TWO PERCENT INTRODUCTORY AAAYYEEE PEEEE AHRRRRRR!". They are both equally disruptive to personal lives, and the free speech argument is flimsy at best. You can take you message public and that's your right, but you cannot use such agressive tactics to FORCE you message on others and argue it is your fundamental right without a damn good reason.
Actually he probably does. The United States is barely out of it's pimple faced teen years, whilst England and Europe are exiting their greying midlife crises.
Un-news
With the DNC list, no problems!
If the telemarketing industry wanted anyone to take the self-regulation claims seriously, they would have honored in spirit not just the letter of the old laws. Instead, they weaseled around it; "OK, you're on the do not call list for company X!" [2 minutes] "Hi! I'm calling from company Y!". I have no sympathy.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It is useful to remember that our government consists of three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. The Judicial Branch, that ruled on the do not call list is not the same bunch that brought us the Patriot Act (Legislative Branch). Sometimes, the checks and balances in Washington even work.
Well it's all well and good when it works. But what happens when your current ruler dies and someone who is less favorable takes over. You are stuck.
I won't even respond to your last troll of a paragraph.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Thus, if people are given the option of taking a one-time action that will block telemarketing (rather than having to resist unwanted sales pitches over and over), telemarketing loses its target audience.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
And phone calls are more traceable than e-mails, especially for telemarketers who need banks of callers who can't all be using disposable pre-paid cellular phones, unlike spammers who can be a single individual getting new access and zombified systems whenever he wants. (And with zombified systems, he can even comply with his ISP's e-mail volume restrictions because it is the zombies that amplify the volume for him.)
Unfortunately, phone calls are only as traceable as the technology that enables them. When networks start switching to use voice over IP-based 'phones', you can bet spammers are going to use zombie machines to dial out to actual customers. It will still require human interaction AI to pull off scams, but the harrassments are never going to end.
If you believe USSC, then "precedent" (which the courts set, themselves) says that they can invalidate any law and place restrictions on the activity of the Executive. For democracy in general, this is a Bad Thing.
The Supreme Court is often the only institution standing between the rights of minorities and the tyranny of the majority, and that my friend is a very, very good thing freedom in general.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
No, that's good for democracy, especially in the US. What's bad for democracy is the unaccountability of the Supremes, in jobs for life with practically no chance of recall, especially if only on grounds of "injustice". It would be better if they just got 20-year terms, with their salaries voted by Congress, and exclusion from any other compensation than their salaries/pensions. Another excellent safeguard would be "Survivor" rules, where every presidential term gets to replace one of the Supremes, selected for retirement by Congress, and voted in by Congress from presidentially selected nominees.
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make install -not war
Who gets to be this "monarch"? The military conqueror? Their numbskull nephew? Pick me! Pick me! I promise to be a Philosopher King.
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make install -not war
I fail to see the fundamental distinction between "you can't use my phone to distribute your message without my express consent" and "you can't use my printing press to distribute your message without my express consent".
A printing press is not generally accessible to the public, on private property, and its use consumes paper, ink, power, and wear on expensive equipment.
A telephone is on a generally publically accessible network (has no access controls over whom can cause it to ring) and its use does not consume paper, ink, you aren't charged for its power consumption, and is practically disposable equipment. It also has common-carrier status.
A facsimile (fax) machine already has its legislation against junk faxes.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Agreed. And the converse is true as well -- there can be tyranny of the minority, with a sympathetic judge. Until we get rid of activist judges who rule based on what they think America should become instead of what the Constitution says about it, if anything, and until, ahem, a certain side of the political spectrum ceases and desists trying to change America through the courts because they know they could never achieve popular opinion for many things, then some additional checks and balances on the Judicial Branch is worth looking into. BTW, I don't like the idea of Executive Orders, either -- our tripartite form of government has served us well for over 2 centuries, but when branches encroach upon another's role and throw out of balance what the founders put into place, that is a very, very bad thing for freedom in general.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
By having a house connected to the public sidewalks, you're implicitly accepting unsolicited visitors.
I'm sorry, I should have been more clear.
By having a phone connected to the public networks, you're accepting unsolicited ATTEMPTS to call you. I.e. people can freely dial your number. What you do once they place the call -- pick up, ignore it, send it to some sort of automated doohicky -- is up to you; they can't force you to do a particular thing, though they can initiate the attempt.
This is akin to people being allowed to send you mail by default, but your not having to read it. Or people being allowed to knock on your door by default, but your not having to answer it. And so forth.
The telemarketing industry has done precisely that
Quite false, until the day comes when telemarketers can magically cause my phone's handset to levitate off the hook. They cannot force you to answer. There is no trepass. Only a request for you to answer, which is not any different than someone asking you at your door if they may enter.
It is clear that businesses publish their phone numbers for the purpose of receiving business contacts
Which brings us back into the realm of implicit intent. Why do people publish their home phone numbers? Because they must want to receive unsolicited phone calls. If they don't want that, then they are free to a) not have a phone, b) not publish the number anywhere, c) explicitly tell people not to call them (e.g. by saying so to individuals, or by saying so to the world via a DNC list).
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
To sum up, then:
Right to Free Speech != Right to be Heard.
Say what you like. The intended audience is in no way obliged to care, or even to attend you.