I'm no lawyer, but doesn't this ruling go against a lot of existing case law about restricting commercial speech? Agencies like the FTC spend enourmous amounts of time determining exactly what kind of speech consumers can hear (ex: no cig ads on TV). How is this any different from all the other restrictions on commercial speech?
That's probably what I was thinking of. Also, a lot of those toll-free help center numbers, particularly technical support for computers and stuff like that, actually get your calls re-routed to India. My dad does business with companies that deal in that sort of thing and he was telling me about how in most cases it's actually cheaper to hire someone in India and pay to have the call re-routed from Santa Clara or wherever, than it is to actually hire someone in the US. And they put the Indians in special classes and teach them to speak English with an American accent and everything. Yeah, I mean if I was a telemarketer I would expect people to talk *#*#*#*# to me, I'd probably find it funny more than anything else (after all I have a lot of experience with people talking *#*#*#*# to me from somewhere else in the country ).
My brother used to be a telemarketer when he was in college. He hated it. At my household we don't answer the phone unless we recognize the CallerID number (or name). If it's important and we should've picked up, they'll leave a message. The phone is there for *my* convenience, not some uber-corporation's (uh, other than SBC).
I know that the poor people who are hired to make all those annoying phone calls are only trying to make a living. That is why I never insult them, but politely explain to them that I don't do business with strangers over my personal phone line. Never have and never will. Anyway, I don't follow the judge's argument about free speech. Isn't our personal phone line an extension of our private space? And besides, those of us who don't do business over our personal line are doing the telemarketers a favor by putting our names on a list. We are saving them a lot of time, so they can call those who actually do business that way. And there must be lots of people who do, or we would not have telemarketers.
I didn't read through the entire thread carefully, so sorry if this has already been talked about. I am a bit upset about this court ruling because I often get up to 30 telemarketing calls a day. I'm not exaggerating. It's slowed down lately, for some reason, but it's unbearable. They wake up my baby on a daily basis. They interrupt everything I do. I don't want to turn my ringer off, because I might miss an actual important call. Anyway... so I'm mad... but here's my question. I guess the free speech thing refers to the sales pitch... but what does it have to do with them dialing my number? Can we not just rename it a "DO NOT DIAL LIST" or something? How does preventing someone from dialing my phone number affect free speech? They can speak for hours and hours and give me their sales pitches all they want... as long as they don't dial my phone number. The number of calls I receive really constitutes harrassment. Is there a telemarketers' organization or union that groups of people can file a class action lawsuit against? I don't really know how the legal system works. If this thing was supposed to go into effect on the 1st of October... doesn't this mean that the telemarketing companies were already given the list? Didn't the government, in effect, just make sure that every telemarketer in the universe now has my number? Thanks! I don't think it was ever supposed to really work. I think it was a huge ploy for the telemarketing companies to make their lists even bigger by centralizing the all of their lists. Even companies who never had my number before now have it. Thanks!