(RSHaas) wrote in message ...
"Don't I have a right not to be forced to hear your sales pitch? (Richard
Peterson)
==============
You certainly have the right to hang up, block calls, use available
technology to screen or divert calls, and so on.


The problem is that telemarketers use strategies to defeat call
screening devices. Why should a phone consumer have to engage in a
telecommunications technology "arms race"? If telemarketers had
integrity, they would not endeavor to defeat the protective devices.


The question is.. can you enlist the aid of the government to prevent me
from calling?

But the government is not preventing you from calling. They are
regulating telemarketers so that they will not call those households
who have expressly indicated that they want to opt out of receiving
sales pitches.

I see it as no different than the government regulating WHEN a
telemarketer can call. Surely, it is no infringement on 1st amendment
rights to forbid commercial telephone solicitations at 4:00 AM



One problem I see in the telemarketing ban is that it focuses on
one form of commercial speech. You turn on the TV and commercials come into
your home using your personal TV and your electric power.

But YOU decide when to turn on your TV. For your analogy to make
sense, the TV would have to turn on by itself, and start blaring ads.

A TV has limited utility as a communication device, whereas the
main purpose of a phone is to provide an individual to make and
receive phone calls from specific (known acquaintences) individuals.



So ban that, huh?
That means the networks have to send you only programming but not the
commercials because you are a spoiled brat that can't be troubled. And the
newspapers. You don't like all the ads. Ban them, too. Your edition of the
newspaper much come scrubbed clean of ads.

Your arguments are pathetic. An individual chooses to expose
himself to ads, by opening up the newspaper. The ads in the newspaper
are not going to suddenly fly into your dining room, and interrupt
your supper.

All that so you can live in an open
capitalist society that is trimmed in such a way that it fits your personal
perfect way.. regardless of the consequences beyond your comfort zone.
The smart thing the telemarketers should do is ignore the ban.. set off 60
million complaints that would flood the court system and tie it up for decades
as it tried to process those cases.

Great, form a conspiracy to break the law. You wouldn't have
access to your phone line for long....

RSHaas