As far as the catalogs go, I’ve had good luck using the Catalog Choice website. They have a service you can pay for, but they also have a free option where you add publications one at a time, and it’s reduced my junk mail quite a bit.
The local paper in my driveway every week, and the endless drycleaning and lawn service ads, though, are apparently unstoppable.
Strangely, the US Constitution, aka the Supreme Law of the Land, trumps minor code infractions.
http://www.firstamendmentcoalition.org/2010/05/can-police-stop-distribution-of-advertising-fliers/
“With respect to leafleting, the Supreme Court has held that such form of communication, whether for political, religious, or commercial purposes, holds a venerable place in American history, and that “pamphlets and leaflets … have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest.” Jobe v. City of Cattlesburg, 409 F.3d 261, 264 (6th Cir. 2005), citing Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938).
In Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 149 (1943), the Supreme Court struck down a ban on door-to-door leafleting, stating that the First Amendment freedom of speech “embraces the right to distribute literature, … and necessarily protects the right to receive it. The privilege may not be withdrawn even if it creates the minor nuisance for a community of cleaning litter from its streets. … Yet the peace, good order, and comfort of the community may imperatively require regulation of the time, place and manner of distribution.”
Likewise, in Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York v. Village of Stratton, 536 U.S. 150, 168 (2002), the Court invalidated licensing requirements for door-to-door solicitors and leafleters upon a challenge brought by a religious organization.”
They have the right to free speech. However, they don’t have the right to compel other people to provide a venue for that speech. This is why newspapers are not obliged to print every letter to the editor they receive. Similarly, I don’t think that people have the right to stand on my front lawn and proclaim that I need to come to Jesus, and that goes for leaving newsletters rubber banded to my front door. I don’t agree that ANYONE has the right to come onto my property to exercise their right to free speech. If I want my mail and packages delivered to my mailbox or door, I allow the letter carrier or delivery person to come onto my property. If I don’t want them to come onto my property, I get a box from either the PO or a private company. If I want electric or water service, then I have to allow meter readers and maintenance people onto my property. In all of these cases, I have an ongoing relationship with the other parties, and I derive some benefit from this relationship.
However, simply placing fliers on my property is of no benefit to me, for the most part. The company that’s advertising their goods or services is basically trespassing, either on my property or on the property of the company that I’m parked at. And for the most part, it’s simply littering. The response rate for that sort of advertising is pretty low.
This means that a community can place restrictions on distributing such items on private property, as noted in your own cite.
Well, that answers one part of the question. The coursts have decided that leafletting is protected speech. What about part two? What is the lower limit on text that transforms trash into speech? Is a wadded up piece of paper with the letter A printed on it tgreated differently than a blank piece of wadded up paper? Also, does it follow that I would, in fact, be within my rights to dump the accumulated paper trash advertisments in a place of business or the home of the owner of such a busisness?
I don’t mind getting spam in my mailbox but it is very annoying that they just throw it on the lawn. What I find most annoying is that they do it in the middle of the night, so there is no way to pick it up without getting dirt stuck to dew all over your hand.
“Whenever I walk people try and hand me a flyer. And when someone tries to hand me out a flyer, it’s kinda like they’re saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.’”
Yup. And exercising my own free speech, they can still go fuck themselves for stuffing things in the cracks of my door, railing, front porch, etc. in ways that tend to end up leaving paper all over the neighborhood.
See the post directly above yours 
It’s legal; obviously there are bounds outside of which it may become illegal, but it’s definitely legal.
And sheesh…how hard is it for you to just tell them to go away, or ask them not to return? I mean really…if you ask them not to return and they do, then you’ve got yourself a bonafide trespassing case right there.
The bestest way, and I do mean bestest way, to keep people off of your property is to advertise that you do not want anyone coming on your property who is not invited. This means posting a “No Trespassing” sign at the entrance to your property. I guarantee it will work for Jehovah’s Witnesses, I can’t say much for vacuum salesmen though.
I suppose though that the inevitable rebuttal to this is “But I shouldn’t have to post ugly No Trespassing signs on my beautiful trees and or gate!”. The only valid response to this is: go live somewhere else where it is illegal to enter the property of another citizen uninvited. Cuz here, in the good ol’ You-Knighted States of Am-urr-icuh it is perfectly legal, and if you read the supreme court ruling, encouraged.
So quit yer whining. 
(this post is not intended to individually single out** Lynn Bodini**, but hey, she spoke what many others thought)
And I always do appreciate a good dialogue along those lines
Seriously though, the doucheknockers who leave enough pamphlets all over to become an eyesore are worthy of a good ol’ kick in the nuts. I mean really. When I was self employed, I went up and down my street and knocked on doors, handed out business cards, politely informing my neighbors of my new business, and told them I would not bother them again. Not-at-homes got one taped to an inner door if possible, never ever left out where the weather could deposit it anywhere.
And if anyone got uppity about code infractions, or wanted to get me in trouble for leaving the cards on their property, well they had my personal contact information right there. I’ve no problem dealing with the wrath of an inconvenienced neighbor. More opportunity for me to sell them my services. And it’s not hard to just apologize and move on to the next house anyway.
I have a No Solicitors sign next to the front door. 99% respect it. 1% don’t, but they usually don’t come back a second time. The ones who just hang a plastic bag full of useless coupons and ads on my doorknob can’t be discouraged, because it’s a different person every time and they’re not going to remember my house anyway. At least they don’t just throw it on the lawn or I’d have to sit on the porch with the shotgun to discourage them.
It is correct that the USA has the First Amendment. That prohibits Congress from restricting speech, behavior functioning as speech, the printing and dissemination of the written word, and several other freedoms not immediately relevant to this discussion, based on content. These being rights of citizens of the USA, the states are enjoined from encroaching on them by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Nothing in either amendment prohbits:
A. The legislature (Congress, a state legislature, local governments chartered by the state, or regulatory agencies acting in accord with statute) from regulating the time, place, and manner of speech in a content-irrelevant manner. E.g., nobody can stop Congressman Brown from making a political speech or Pastor Leatherlung from conducting a revival, but they can restrict anybody, including them, from doing it with a bullhorn at 3:00 AM on the streetcorner nearest your home.
B. A private individual from doing what he legally may to infringe on the asserted rights of another, e.g., if I am a gay man who owns the only auditorium in town, the Citizens Committee Against Same-Sex Marriage has no First Amendment right to rent my auditorium against my wishes.
C. Anyone from holding another accountable at law for the content of their speech, e.g., if I claim publicly and repeatedly that Joe’s Used Cars sells lemons and does not honor warranties, and Joe loses business in consequence, he may sue me for the injury done him by my speech.
Around here, No Soliciting and No Trespassing signs do absolutely nothing. The guy wedging trash in your door knows he won’t get in trouble because nobody is home during the day and the cops have more important things to do. Besides, some of this is just an excuse to cruise the neighborhood looking for easy things to steal.
I am totally on-board with this rant. I’ve talked to people with my city government many times about this shit, and it all comes down to the fact that it’s “protected commercial speech” somehow. Yet when I’ve asked if it would be okay for me to throw my trash on the grounds at City Hall, somehow that would be “littering”, even after I explained that I was simply offering a free sample of a commodity I produce and would be wiling to sell.
Ooh, ooh! [waves hand frantically] can I help you do that? You don’t have to pay me. And afterwards, I’d buy you a scone.
That would be so much fun. Especially for the person who made it all the way home sporting the the tract with the Kung-Fu Angel Assassins rescuing people from the shapeshifting werewolf shaman (who repents at the end).
I keep getting multiple phone books, no two are alike, plus supplemental thinner phone books. There are no government-blue-pages listings in them, that I can find. One seems to be all businesses, one seems to be white pages, another thin one is for phone numbers for people…up north in Hooterville?.. I don’t mind having ONE big phone book full of actual phone numbers for businesses, schools, government agencies, and phone numbers for landlines, but that seems to be a thing of the past.
I am a weird duck…I guess I really am.
I don’t mind the crap whether it is on my doorstep or on my car in a parking lot.
I guess I sympathize with people trying to start up their own businesses and trying to get the word out. The vast majority of the stuff I get is of this sort.
There’s usually a number you can call to opt out. I caught the last guy and gave him back the book and he gave me a card with a number to call. I called, and the coversation:
Person Helping: and what is your phone number?
Me: ::recites number::
PH: is that a new line? I don’t see a name associated with it. . .
Me: had it for three years.
PH: can you give me your address so I can update your profile?
Me: I don’t want my “profile” updated, I just want to opt out.
PH: Oh. Well I need your address so I can note that you don’t want to get it.
Me: mumbles address
PH: :: painfully also extracts my name:: Okay, so you won’t be getting the next issue
Me: The next issue? No. I don’t want any more of these things ever.
PH: Oh, okay. :rolleyes:
I can’t even stop the actual littering motherfuckers. We live on a moderately busy road and not a week goes by that I can’t pick up a soda can or two, a couple of empty bags of Cheetos, and a few other unidentifiable bits of trash out of the bushes.
:rolleyes:
Yeah, it’s a US only thing, because no other place has a first amendment, so in those places, like in Europe or Canada, people that put advertising in your mailbox can be summarily shot.