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September 25, 2003
Second Judge Strikes
U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham, Colorado, has ruled that the DoNotCall list violates the First Amendment. Now before y'all start foaming at the mouth, go read his well-written opinion here.
His basic holding appears to be that the DoNotCall list is designed to protect citizens against unwanted invasions of privacy by telemarketers, a legitimate government goal. The hair in the bread is that the list only bans commercial calls, not those from charitable organizations....which are arguably the same invasion of privacy. Furthermore, he points out, there's nothing to stop some fly-by-night company from registering as a charitable organization just to evade the restrictions of the list.
In other words, if you're going to ban telemarketing calls on the basis that they're invading people's privacy, you have to ban all telemarketing calls that invade people's privacy....not just the ones you don't like.
I don't have a problem with that.
Ban 'em all.
Posted by Rita at September 25, 2003 08:03 PM
Comments
I don't have a problem with that either. The state PBA calls like every 3 months. Annoying? Yup. Donate or get pulled over, hmmm... The ticket would almost be cheaper. ;)
Posted by: Psycho Dad at September 26, 2003 04:44 PM
Doncha hate those? I finally asked to be removed from their calling list. I figured it was pretty safe, since the phone's listed in Mike's name.
Heh.
Posted by: Rita at September 26, 2003 05:59 PM
Last night (9-30-03) a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Labor said that his department estimates that 15,000 New Mexicans work as telemarketers and that if the "do not call" list is upheld, approximately 1,500 to 3,000 of them will lose their jobs. He went on to talk about how awful it is to take jobs away from poor people in the poorest state in the union, but the real issue was already exposed. Who do the other 12,000 to 13,500 telemarketers work for? When the controversy clears, what will we have gained? The percentage of restricted callers seems to be a very small part of the whole annoying group.
Posted by: kenneth at October 1, 2003 06:35 AM
The lost jobs argument is specious at best. Taken to the absurd, one could use the same argument that meth producers shouldn't be arrested because it would take away their source of income.
Posted by: Rita at October 1, 2003 06:42 AM