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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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Score 1 for the good guys! I don't know where the First Amendment guaranteed advertising and intrusive solicitation to corporations, and I'm glad the Supreme Court didn't find it buried in fine print either.
Perhaps this will start a trend of defining (and more importantly, further limiting) this "Corporate Free Speech" assumed and abused by those who believe it is their right to harass us for the sake of profits.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I think the do not call list is a great start - it dosent hurt telemarketers because guess what? If I want to get on the list I clearly dont want to hear from them, thus Im not a good prospect. Telemarketers should be thanking the government for putting all the people that dont give a crap about their calls together.
At least this time there is a valid reason for my story being rejected.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I've really become spoiled by the lack of telephone solicitations. I have to say that this is one law the government really did right.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
"How about next we ban companies from asking for your phone number every single chance they get?"
People can ask whatever they want. You have the right not to answer. I have never had anyone refuse to do business with me because I wouldn't give them my phone number.
n4
Of course, it was the same Supreme Court that declared parts of the Patriot Act unconstitutional. The SC is being VERY consistent here.
The system works. Sometimes it just takes a little more time.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Actually, having a front door is considered an invitation to tresspass, long enough to state your business (unless there is a sign saying no tresspassing).
This is just the equivilant of a No Tresspassing sign, only actually enforced. If only No Tresspassing signs carried as harsh a penalty.
I wonder how many, if any, telemarketting executives out there appear on the Do-Not-Call lists themselves? I think *THAT* would be an interesting fact to look into. Does anyone have access to the data pertaining to this?
There are those who might argue that the telemarketers are doing nothing more than the equivalent of "phone junk mail" - that these phone calls are no different from the unsolicited ads you get in the mail, and that it's not a long walk between the mailbox and the trash can.
That being said, I'm delighted that the Supreme Court didn't accept that interpretation. Telemarketers demand your time in a more immediate fashion, and with some of them able to stay on the line until you've held the switch hook down for 10 seconds, they are far more capable of interfering with other communications than junk mail does with other correspondence.
I'm glad that the Supreme Court took that view - you see, the purpose of the Supreme Court is not necessarily to bow to the will of the people; its purpose is to see whether the balance of rights is maintained.
So, let's not get too carried away with what this decision means. The telemarketing companies may end up trying other ways to get around the "do-not-call" list.
We know what eternal vigilance pays for, after all.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
I'm not sure if your post is supposed to be flamebait, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Your description of the Patriot Act is fairly accurate. There are some sections that are newer, but the biggest reason why the PA is a "bad thing" is that it largely removes the process of checks and balances for certain things. The recently overturned portion of the Act involved a nearly 30-year-old law dealing with requests for confidential information. The change from that old law was that the FBI no longer needed a court order/warrant/notification of the parties involved. So the FBI was, as the judge put it, performing "self-certification" in order to get this information. No cause, no court, no preponderance of evidence, nothing. The FBI could want it and grant it all in-house. Yes, it's faster. But it gives them more unchecked power.
Not all of the Patriot Act is bad. But that careful reading you suggest will reveal a lot more than a compilation of existing law.
Although it does not constitute much of a "need to know" most targeted advertising is handled via either phone messages or junk snailmail. Each requires your phone number or zip code to target you specifically. Usually I am ok with the zip code, as I see a benefit from it (coupons), and recieving excess mail is much less annoying than getting unwanted phone messages. Guess my point is that zip codes are one of the "nicer" options for targeted advertising.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
Eh... I'd be careful on the listing the police department number as your own. Too many phone calls to their number asking for John Gaughan and you may up for charges ranging from "false representation as an officer" to "obstruction of justice" to "being a public nuisance." Sure, the charges may not be too terribly applicable, but how many courts are going to argue for you forwarding all business calls to a target, thereby tying up phone lines that are needed for the work of justice?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I have subscribed to every possible method of stopping the buggers calling me. I'm on the UK equivalent DNC list, I have also registered my postal address in the same way. I bought a TiVO so I wouldn't have to watch the adverts on telly and I use firefox with adblock to clean up my web browsing. Finally, I run spamassassin and thunderbird which clears out SPAM. I wonder how long it will be before the advertisers realise that I don't actually want anything to do with them. More to the point, those that get through my defenses go onto my "do not ever buy anything from these jerks" list so they really should learn to leave me alone. I suspect many others are of the same opinion.
In the UK there is an interesting get-out for the telemarketers - while they cannot call to sell me something there is a provision that allows them to do market research. Now, every single call I get is from some company asking me if I were to replace my kitchen or bathroom etc, which would it be? This is not market research, it is just a slimey way around the legislation. Thankfully, it is rare that I get these calls compared with before I joined the telephone preference service but it is still annoying. Advertisers need to understand that I am making a definite decision to have nothing to do with them and they should just stay away. I would love to say "or else" but have no idea what the "else" would be.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Your right, they will get around the DNC list very easily. A "Charity" organization will simply be the outsourced telemarketers. If they get a small percentage of the profits, the call is technically from a "charity". So, Citibank can have a hundred calls a day going to your DNC'ed phone number, and because Christian Childrens Fund is doing the sales, it is all legit.
And what, exactly, is necessarily wrong with a monarchy? Must it be what it used to be? And even if it would be that bad, would you say that a republic with a president necessarily is better? Is it?
I live in a monarchy, and if it doesn't go against your worldview too much, we are actually free (we can even use sex toys, unlike our Texan friends), we don't have a government that locks us up indefinitely, we don't have the death penalty, we believe in healthcare and education for everyone (I'm silly enough to believe a civilisation worth its name should do that), we're not very religious, and we have long ago decided to get rid of any imperalistic and oppressive ambitions. Can your "modern" country brag about the same things?
less than 14 hours after getting the phone line sorted for my new house, before I gave the number to anyone, I got a "call" from a tape machine. It claimed to be 'carol ######' from BBC radio 9, saying I'd won a prize after having entered my details into the BBC database. Need less to say, I hung up. There is no-one of that name working in the BBC, and I hadn't entered my details into any database, and as far as I'm aware, there IS NO RADIO 9!
Come the phone bill, I have accepted a reverse charges call from an organisation that doesn't exist, and am being billed £109 for the 11 or so seconds.
Shit hits fan
phone company doesn't charge me, changes my number, self is happy
Guess who call 2 days later...
shit hits fan again, after lengthy rant at phone corp, it turns out their standard contract gives them the right to sell my number to certain orgs. Since I hadn't signed a contract, I was miffed. Turns out their contract is vocal - I entered into it when I phoned and asked for a land line.
No longer with above company.
slashdotting from work...
There is some question as to whether or not it was actually the PATRIOT act that was partially declared unconstitutional. The ACLU says it was, many (the Justice department and several other independent attorneys) say it was another law that was struck down.
I get to fuck with them to no end, and waste their time.
Last one I got was from Earthlink, trying to sell me high speed internet service. Some Indian guy who only spoke b+ level English tried to sell me something I already have:
Indian: Do you have a computer?
Me: (yelling) Dear, do we have a computer? (pause)
yes, we have a TRS-80. Will your Internet work with that?
Indian: What operating system do you use?
Me: Apple Basic.
Indian: Oh yes, no problem. Would you like out anti-virus, spam blocker, and popup blocker for $10 extra?
Me: No, I like SPAM(tm), it's great cooked. And I've already had my flu shot this year.
(After 10 minuets of this sort of sillyness)
Me:By the way, what is this 'Internet' thing you keep mentioning?
You can try to pick up telemarketers who call (guy or girl, doesn't really matter), act like an idiot, act interested and accidentally drop the phoe a lot, accuse the caller of racial slander, etc. This accomplishes two ends. You get to have a great time messing with people's heads and you waste their time, lowering the profitability of telemarketing overall. I *highly* reccomend it...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
What FTC should have done is to have a DO CALL LIST, in which telemarketer can only contact those on the list, and must delete every info for the client who are not in the list.
No, because that would not have passed constitutional muster. It would be seen as restricting speech to people who have not explicitly declared that they did not want it. It would not be people asserting their privacy rights over speech, it would be them waiving it and restricting speech in absentia of the waiver.
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.)
Because of the illegal actions employed by spammers, spamming needs to be made illegal outright. That's simply not going to happen for telemarketing; its lobby has too much legitimacy.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I have the evil Verizon as my Telco. I lived in area where Call Intercept was available. It worked pretty well at stopping Telemarketers for a while. They began to work around this issue by showing 800 numbers when they called. This allowed them to slip by the first line of defense. So I went ahead and got a caller ID modem and got CallerId from Ascendis Software. This allowed me to hang up on those 800 numbers. Life was good. Then, I had to move to new place only 10 minutes from where I was. I discovered Verizon had merged with GTE around 2000 or so and never upgraded the Central Office in the new area. So call intercept was not available in the new area. The day I moved in to the new place, I was slammed by people selling security systems, painting, re-modeling, etc. I promptly added my new numbers to the do not call list and configured CallerId to block this crap. It's a bloody war trying to stop these bastards.
Given the current advances in Voice-Recognition and Text2Voice, why not program an Eliza-Bot to talk to sales scum on the phone? Maybe give it a heavy foreign accent to somewhat hide obvious problems with the voice recognition and A.I.?
An Eliza-like bot should do the trick - just responds to a bunch of key-phrases whenever the sales-guy stops talking and for the rest: the good old "Tell me more" should work just fine.
Just make sure the bot never responds with a definit "yes" or "no" but stays vague enough so "Mr. Sales" doesn't get his contract...
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev