I did, from his link:
Do Not Call = No Solicitors.
Right, but lissener was not talking about peddlers or solicitors, who are already prohibited from calling you if you’re on the DNC list. He was talking about political calls which are one of the most effective, and certainly the most cost-effective, way for political candidates to get a message out.
Really? If your car was getting towed you wouldn’t want your neighbor to get out the phone book, look up the name on your mailbox, and call you to say “Hey they’re gonna tow your car?”
Are you *really * comparing this to the 837 calls I got in October from various members of the Democratic Party urging me to vote? Because I’ve gotta tell you, I was already planning on voting, and they came damned close to dissuading me.
There’s a world of difference between “information” and “information that is valuable to me personally, which I could conceivably give a shit about”.
A Republican Congress is worse than getting your car towed.
Good points, but… if you really, really hate being bothered at home (as I do), the cost is probably worth it. We’ve paid for the “Privacy Director” service from our phone company for years, and it’s all but eliminated the solicitation calls. I actually can’t remember the last time we got one. (We did also opt onto the “do not call” list, so that may be part of it.)
For those who aren’t familiar with it, Privacy Director—which costs us $1.95 a month—plays a recorded message for callers who call with their number blocked from appearing on Caller ID, which seems to include the vast majority of telemarketers. They’re asked to identify themselves, after which our phone rings showing “Privacy Director” on the display, we hear the recorded message, and can either accept or reject the call. Telemarketers generally don’t even seem to bother leaving a message, so the phone never rings.
Of course it doesn’t prevent someone calling with an unblocked number, which generally shows “Out of Area” on the display, but those are easy enough to ignore and are infrequent.
Of course I would prefer not to pay the $1.95, but in the meantime I find it’s well worth the peace and quiet it provides.
I’m not sure what you mean. Doesn’t the fact that SCOTUS said those groups ARE permitted to ring your doorbell kind of trump any trespassing issue? Besides, this particular discussion is about the parallels with phone solicitation: isn’t physical trespassing pretty irrelevant here?
Fuckin’ A. I can hang a “No Solicitors” sign on my front door to ward off assholes from beating on it, but when I sign up for the National Do Not Fucking Call My Fucking House “sign” to “hang” on my telephone, they just beat their way right on in.
On preview I see others have brought up the “No Solicitors” angle.
I wouldn’t mind my neighbor beating on my door to tell me my car was being towed. I wouldn’t mind him calling to say the same thing.
Caller ID costs $9.95 or something a month, plus another $1.95 or something for annonymous call blocking (AT&T). It was over $10 a month for me to see that it was just another number that caller ID didn’t recognize, and this at a time when I was trying to negotiate a better price for DSL. I dropped the caller ID/annonymous fees and now instantly light into assholes who call. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s fun.
This is a great quote. It sums up quite eloquently why telemarketers are in the wrong.
Huh, you’re a lawyer? Huh.
You, to SCOTUS, arguing this case: My client signed up for the do not call list.
SCOTUS: Well then, we’re done here, no further discussion needed. You’re the best lawyer we’ve ever had in this court!
Since no one is being forced to listen to anything. In the SCOTUS case I cited above, you’re “forced” to hear your doorbell ring if you have a doorbell. I’d think the ringing of your phone would be pretty well addressed by that precedent. Whether you answer either, or continue the conversation once you have, is up to you. See? No force.
[QUOTE=lissener]
In the SCOTUS case I cited above, you’re “forced” to hear your doorbell ring if you have a doorbell.
[QUOTE]
The case you cite found a law forbidding some door-to-door solicitation unconstitutional. It also referenced several other cases where various general or specific prohibitions were placed by the government on solicitations were similarly found unconstitutional. However, none of those cases seem to me analagous to the situation at hand. The Court, in its opinion, specifically mentions the right of specific property owners to prevent solicitation on their own property. So, here’s the state of things regarding door-to-door solicitation as I understand it:
- In general, the Government cannot ban solicitation (free speech).
- Subject to some limitations of law (public places, etc), a specific property owner can ban solicitation on his/her own property (no solicitation sign).
- The government will then assist you in enforcing this ban (trespass laws).
I am not generally aware of and would appreciate you finding and citing any trespass law that states (approximately):
A property owner-placed “No solicitation” sign does not prevent political solicitors from coming on to the property and ringing the doorbell, but then they have to leave. They can then come back on the property and ring the bell again, but then have to leave. Repeat ad nauseum.
The comparison to the current implementation of the National No Call list is left as an excercise for the student…
Really, you ought to try reading the content you link to:
Translation: The Court upheld the principle of private property and prohibition against trespass thereupon.
Nope – the two are precisely parallel. In each case, the guilty party is intruding upon private property without permission, and indeed against an express prohibition.
Nope. If you put up a NO SOLICITORS sign (equivalent to being on the DNC list), it’s more like you would be “forced” to hear Officer Friendly haul away the criminal trespasser (or, in a more just universe, hear the percussive effect of Officer Friendly’s night stick upon the criminal trespasser’s hollow cranium).
This is simply not true. I remember a discussion in First Amendment class where the very topic came up. You cannot, for example, ban all the cheap methods of speech while leaving the more expensive ones protected. This becomes an issue with, for example, laws against hand bills that are dressed up as anti-littering ordinances.
I very much enjoyed being woken at 2:57 the other morning. I have no idea what they were selling, but my lovely call display was kind enough to tell me it was a telemarketer calling from Georgia. I’m sure they are very sorry that their auto-dialer messed up and called me in the middle of the night.
I only wish I had picked up so I would KNOW who it was that was calling so I could raise hell about it.
That is actually incorrect. The case you cited above, was about a town ordinance that sought to prohibit door-to-door sales or on-street solicitation. The local government went too far. They can’t actualize that town ordinance.
However, I’m a private citizen. If I have a “No Trespassing!” sign and you’re an asshole who chooses to come onto my property to get to my doorbell… you’re still illegally trespassing the moment you go through my gate. Your right not to have your views silenced by the government do not offer you protection for violating my personal property rights.
Fine, I’ll bite. Yes, that would be my argument to the Supreme Court. At which time I’d expect something akin to the following response:
“Long Time Lurker, while the Court would like nothing more than to rule against you based on your obvious complete lack of interest in this outcome of this case, we cannot find a reason upon which to do so.
In deciding upon the constitutionality of a statute restricting freedom of speech, the Court must judge the right to speech against a person’s interest in being left alone. Indeed, in Rowan v. Post Office Department., 397 U.S. 728 (1970), the Court found that “[t]he right of every person ‘to be let’ alone must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate.”
In so judging in the past, the Court has granted less weight to the rights of solicitors in private residences than in public places. It appears that the plaintiff in this case is making an argument analogous to “the government does not have the right to enact rules against trespassing because doing so interferes with the right of people to come onto your property for purposes of canvassing or solicitation.” Although those wishing to canvass or solicit by making personal visits to homes have received some First Amendment protection from the Courts, that protection has always been based on the fact that the Court determined that it is up to the homeowner himself (or herself) to indicate his (or her) desire to be left alone (in which event the state may enforce that desire).
In other words, the Court has not looked favorably upon states assuming that all homeowners wish to remain undisturbed. See for example, Martin v. Struthers 319 U.S. 141 (1943) where the Court held a flat ban on naked restriction of the dissemination of ideas unconstitutional on the basis that less-restrictive alternatives were available. For example, the city could have allowed a person to indicate that he or she does not wish to be disturbed and made it an offense for anyone to ring the bell of such person.
It would be contrary to our rationale in Martin for us to now decide that such person no longer has the right to indicate that he or she not be disturbed, and disallowed the government from making it offense to disturb such person despite his express wishes.”
To which I would probably respond, “In my defense, I thought I was responding to a post in the pit of the Straight Dope, not writing a legal brief to be argued in the Supreme Court of the United State. Anyway, I’m not even personally affected by the outcome of this case because I discontinued my home phone precisely because of bothersome solicitation calls. Nonetheless, I’ll probably see you here next year when lissener is arguing that I should have to pay for unwilling solicitation when political activists begin calling my cell phone.”
I’ve had called ID for 30 years, from different phone companies, at different locations, and I never paid more than $6/month for it. Now all the services available to me include it for free, even the blocking option, IIRC. And if the ID doesn’t show up (“private number”), that’s a hint that it is someone that doesn’t want you to know who they are, so act accordingly.
I agree it’s a sad commentary on society when you have to spend money to protect yourself, but be glad that option is at least available.
Exactly. What rings my chimes is the politicos and non-profits who are immune to the no-call regulation, and call anyway. Do they really think that when I signed up to NOT receive calls, I didn’t mean them? Why would I be annoyed to receive calls selling me product A but not product B?
People can talk as much as they want about constitutionality of banning political phone calls, and I think there are good arguments on both sides. In reality, however, I don’t think the political/charitable exemption was driven by constitutional considerations (to the extent of believing that speech was protected) as opposed to politicians passing a law and being willing to exempt themselves.
Unless we get a court of nine Clarence Thomases (OK, 5…), which might be a good idea on commercial speech matters but pretty much a disaster everywhere else, there is no way a court will rule it unconstitutional to ban business solicitation calls because political/charity calls weren’t included in the ban also. The politicians saw something that would be very popular, cost almost nothing, but was still susceptible to creating a nice little carve out to leave themselves untouched. So they did it.