Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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'
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'
They get them to. By the pallet. We don't want them any more than the public does. They used to drop them off at everyones desks until it became such a common complaint that the facilities guys receive the pallet, never even unwrap it and push it strait into the dumpster. Phonebooks are created and distributed by a select few companies who lobby local officials to keep decades old laws in place that require phone companies continue to supply them with data and allow the delivery of their "product"
Remember: Phonebooks don't come from the phone company. They are separate entities. Some are owned by phone companies in part or whole, but rarely is the phone-book you received produced by your actual phone company.
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.