The Constitution Does Not Defend The Right To Annoy
from the indeed! dept
A nice little editorial summarizing what has been said way too often by all of us who can’t stand spammers and telemarketers standing behind the First Amendment. Free speech does not mean you have the right to annoy people. It does not mean you have the right to invade our homes and bother us. Of course, the article then goes on to say that California’s anti-spam law and the laws that may get passed by Congress are a good start. I wish that were true, but I fear the unintended consequences of all the laws proposed so far will cause more problems than they solve. I wish I knew what the perfect solution was – but I haven’t seen it yet.
Comments on “The Constitution Does Not Defend The Right To Annoy”
Extradition Solution
Could we partner with some undemocratic country like Saudi Arabia or North Korea, so that they issue the death penalty against spammers? Then spammers who send to mailboxes owned by someone in that country could then be extradited, where they are decapitated.
Or we could force them to provide “community service” by working for the peace corps in Afghanistan, which amounts to the same thing.
Do Not Call Needs to be All-Inclusive
The editorial is being disingenuous about the Do Not Call list with regard to the first amendment ruling. The judge never said that telemarketers have a constitutional right to annoy people with phone calls. What he actually said is that the rule violates the first amendment because it prohibits commercial telemarketer calls but allows calls by charitable organizations and political groups. The reasoning is that the federal government is making a distinction about whether or not a call is allowed based on the content of the call.
The obvious solution is that the Do Not Call regulations must prohibit ALL calls. Congress fixed the first judge’s objection, but what are the odds that they’ll ram through Congress a bill that prohibits political fundraising calls?
So... Dress your SPAM up as...
…satire and you should be well within the law.
Re: get caller ID
If the caller ID says UNAVAILABLE I don’t answer it. Saves me a lot of trouble, though I’d prefer the damn phone not ring at all unless it’s someone I want to talk to.
Re: Re: get caller ID
Get a Caller ID box that comes with a call blocking feature. Mine does.
When I receive a call from someone I don’t want to hear from again, I press the Copy To button and select Phonebook or Block List.
If I select Block List and the person calls back the box picks up the phone and then hangs it up.
If I press Phonebook it copies it to it’s ‘permanent’ memory of which it has 64K so it stores a lot of phone numbers.