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Don't Want a Phonebook? Give Up Your Privacy
newscloud writes "Seattle will soon shut down its popular phonebook opt-out website as a result of a costly settlement with Yellow Pages publishers. Going forward, the only way to stop unwanted phonebook deliveries will be to visit the industry's opt out site and provide them with your personal information. They will share it with their clients, most of whom are direct marketing agencies, who in turn commit not to use it improperly. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled in October that The Yellow Pages represent protected free speech of corporations (including Canada's Yellow Media Inc.); defending and settling the lawsuit cost Seattle taxpayers $781,503. The city said the program's popularity led to a reduction of 2 million pounds of paper waste annually."
They stop pretty quickly after you do it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Corporations are not people, and do not get natural rights such as the right to free speech.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So just visit their website and lie about everything. Make the information offensive, even, or obviously false (all except the address, I guess, which they have to have). 99% of the mail I get is junk mail anyway, so much so that I rarely look at it and just use automatically it for fire starter, animal bedding, etc.
Never give up privacy, even under duress. When this kind of thing happens, meet them on a level playing field and corrupt their database with junk info.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
I just use them to weight down my recycle bin so it doesn't blow away. I will not give out my address to them.
Collect all the unwanted phonebooks and deliver them to the phone company regional office, preferably piled up in front of the door.
Between my cellphone + computer, if I want to find someone or a business I just run a search.
But, recently there have been issues where we lost power + internet/data, yet will had access to a phone. In which case, I guess it's useful then. Or as fireplace fuel if there is a true emergency.
Sure, there are people that NEED them. The elderly person who never learned to use a computer, the poor that don't have internet, the random dude that just doesn't like the internet in general, et.
But forcing everyone to get it is kind of lame. Then again, it's no big deal to trash it or recycle it.
As the Federal Court of Appeals says... leaving phone books is protected free speech. Well, exercise the right! Take every phone book you can find, and leave it at the (Federal Court of Appeals) court house - and let THEM deal with the problem.
If nobody reads the damn thing, how can it be profitable? And if it isn't profitable, why are they distributing it?
Unless people actually *are* reading it. If so, then how is this a waste?
And we're not going to run out of trees any faster than we'll run out of potatoes. Trees used for paper are grown in farms, and are selectively bred for that purpose (the resulting product is of higher quality and cheaper than from wild trees.) Paper production isn't the reason for decreasing numbers of trees, and recycling paper is a huge waste of time and resources.
The only reason there are fewer trees in the world (and not in the US btw, the number of trees we have in the US has been steadily growing for decades now) is because jungle territory is being cut down to make way for real-estate.
That said, I'm not sure why the politicians would make an issue of trying to reduce the number of phone books. Just treat it like any other junk mail: send it right to the trash. And you only have to do it once a year.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
We attempted to opt-out of Yellow Pages deliveries in our local area in California, but it doesn't work. The guys who throw these things on everyone's front porch do not care whether you are on the list or not. I'm not even sure that they have a list. You will still get phone books.
There have always been limitations on "free speech" when it comes to pollution. Even an individual isn't allowed to rant about the lizard men with a megaphone at 3 AM.
The phone books are put on private property without permission. Is there some law that gives them permission? They're welcome, I suppose, to stand on the sidewalk and read the phone book at me, if they want, or even to stand there with the book open. I suppose they could pay the Post Office to mail it to me, since they have a special legal exemption.
If they've got some kind of blanket exemption, then of course an opt-out is going to violate privacy. And if this is the case, it sounds like they need to eliminate the blanket exemption, and I don't see "free speech" being a defense against that, since your right to speech ends where my property begins.
So, what happens if as a private citizen I post a notice on my property saying that any unsolicited material deposited on my property will incur a disposal fee of $100 per item, and then bill the YP company for my disposing of the trash they left without permission?
Reminder: freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to use someone else's property without permission. You want to speak, use public property or hire your own hall.
How long can they sell advertisement in books nobody looks at?
Just ignore them. They save me from grabbing the free local rag to start my BBQ. Weather I burn Yellow pages or Yellow journalism it's the same amount of paper. This way the 'News and Review' doesn't get a wrong impression and think anybody is actually reading them.
Right now, business's are buying yellow pages adds because they always have. Give it a little while.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Backstops for BB gun and air rifle targets. Why should I pay money for those when I get several free ones each year and they stop as many or more shots as the rubber or plastic ones that cost money, especially the large entire metro area ones that come about once a year.
Time to offend someone
Make giant paper mache/spit wads and launch them at the corporate building with a trebuchet. Figure out where the executive suite is and call that the bullseye.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How does opting out of a phone book violate the free speech of a company's ad. Your not stopping them from printing it, your not blocking them from speaking about it and your not taking action which damages the services they provide in any way. I'm really confused how this is a free speech issue. Personally I haven't used a phone book in years, I just Google everything, so I can understand why people would opt of the phone book.
...you must help me defeat the Lizard Men once and for all.
And I was out there no later than 2:45.
Just wait for the next piece of junk mail to come with a pre-paid return postage card. Stick the card to the phonebook and drop it in the mail. This results in:
1) The idiots forcing you to receive worthless phone book have wasted money.
2) The idiots sending you other worthless junk have wasted money.
3) The Post Office gets money.
Use mailinator.com That should save you some hassle.
Now we only need "phoninator". That might be a heck of a business opportunity for someone who could figure out how to make money at it. Or at least convince someone to buy them up before the bills come due.
I am not a crackpot.
I disagree. Once it's been established that leaving phone books at a property constitutes speech, then I would argue that protest speech (dumping them all at once) is more protection worthy than commercial speech (leaving one for use).
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
But, recently there have been issues where we lost power + internet/data, yet will had access to a phone. In which case, I guess it's useful then.
If you've still got cell service -- even if (especially if) you don't have data service -- text your query to 466453 ('GOOGLE') and get an answer by SMS.
I am not a crackpot.
The Founders recognized that the institution of government is the primary, and perhaps only mechanism by which individuals are ever deprived of their Rights. Therefore, our rights are elaborated as explicit limitations on government power.
Corporations were created BY government. Rather than granting government more power to deal with the monster which government created, we should limit the government's power to grant special legal privileges in the first place.
A corporate charter is basically a contract granting the corporation certain privileges. There is no reason whatsoever that the charter cannot include restrictions such as a ban on campaign contributions and political activity. That's where reform efforts should be focused. It would be insane to amend The Constitution to give the federal government any more power.
Like many other people, I maintain a open wifi connection specifically to provide for public access. Likewise, I maintain an open 144 MHz repeater, and a while ago, a packet BBS that could take and deliver email. I also write free software such as this. When I mean something to be free, or shared for free, there's no negative to taking advantage of that. When I write commercial software, I make sure that I've made the transaction required clear.
Many commercial and/or public establishments make open wifi available; coffee houses, McDonalds, libraries, etc. Doesn't hurt a thing to use those connections.
Now if you prefer not sharing, that's fine -- that's your choice. If you want your connection(s) closed, then by all means close them. The point of an open connection is that it's open. Such things can be used responsibly. A text message, simple text email or IM is absolutely insignificant to any particular wifi connection. A compressed voice connection isn't horrible, bandwidth-wise, either. The more open connections there are, the better it all works as far as portability goes.
Just FYI, the financial benefit I was talking about was the lack of a phone bill; in such a situation, you need to keep your own wifi available, obviously, and you can certainly use that, and keep it closed, without using anyone else's if you want to. You know, it was only a few years ago that almost no one had a portable phone. We survived just fine that way.
Perhaps you might consider learning to share a bit. You know, like open source or free software. Or not. I don't care. I posted to offer those who were open minded a change to consider an opportunity. Not to convert anyone. I'm already phone-bill free, you see.
As for stealing, I'm pretty sure you don't know what that word means. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I help small businesses entrepreneurs and can offer a different perspective. I've never had to train a janitor, barber, dispatcher, tow-truck operator or politician how to use a phone book. (or how to use one safely, or how to properly-configure or update their telephone to connect to a particular phone number)
The economics of yellow pages still work. About a quarter of the volume for a couple IT support business I'm familiar with...comes from phone book ads. Which, per customer, provide an incredibly cheap "fire and forget" low-maintenance form of advertising for blue and pink-collar businesses that don't involve owners sitting at computers. I'm a geek and have a browser running on me (or near me) close to 100% of the time, but noticed that some small businesses just don't exist online...and probably for good reason.
There are inherently local industries of which most high paid digital technorati seem blissfully unaware. For example, try looking for a cheap tow-truck (emphasis on cheap) when you're in the grocery parking lot and your car won't start.
I did, less than a year ago, and noted only the highest priced scum of the earth operators with local govt contracts, gaudy chromed trucks, complicated fees STARTING at $85 minimum hook-up fee had web sites. The patient and polite owner/operators that answered their own phone and charged $40-$50, fixed price per tow, were accessible to me only via the phone-book.
Janitorial services can have an effective print ad with just a few minutes of specification and a phone call. The immigrant with a mop and bucket that can't achieve the same cost-time efficiency with a local web designer or Go-Daddy rep that they can achieve with the Yellow Pages sales girl. Advertising "to the whole world" when you want local customers for a local activity creates its own problems, such as making you an easy target for international spammers/scammers/web-site defacers. It probably means that to monitor the presentation of your web-ad, you'd have to go get a computer in addition to purchasing the mop & bucket. You'd have to learn how to use that computer, then pay guys like me to de-louse it, join the forced-march of software licensing, pay local lawyers to defend against scanning patent infringement law-suits because they "probably infringe" if they have a small business with a computer. etc, responding to bank notices they need to type in their old PIN at the following link, etc., when she just wants to start a business mopping floors to feed her kids because she doesn't want her kids to grow up seeing welfare as a solution.
I travel a lot for business. My favorite barber shops (that's right, *real* barber shops...not styling salons) could only be found in the hotel room's phone book, not the guest services directory or the web. The barber shops I like are staffed with neatly dressed old gentlemen that will keep you keep you up to date on sports, local politicians, zoning laws and economic scuttlebutt while giving you a perfect trim & shave. They don't do web-sites and don't do appointments. On the other hand, you may be waiting next to the zoning commissioner, because he's made to wait for his turn too.
Barber shops and tow-trucks remind me that for some activities, phone books are the "on ramp" to getting "plugged in" to "effective knowledge networks" of people and personalities for getting things done.
That said, I see sites like Yelp! and Google Places increasingly performing the same function at zero cost and with "little or no effort" on the business owner's part.