TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal

Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal

Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)
Tue, 02 Nov 2004 19:38:59 -0800

Bob Goudreau said:

>>> However, I think pre-recorded phone calls, of any kind, should be
>>> illegal.

>> Me too.

> Not me. I actually find the prerecorded announcement calls that we
> choose to receive weekly from my kids' schools to be useful.

OK, let me clarify. I meant any kind of pre-recorded TELEMARKETING calls.
Political tele-spam is included in that category.

> Perhaps you actually meant "UNSOLICITED pre-recorded phone calls,
> of any kind". Even then (and leaving aside the constitutional issues of
> political speech raised by campaign calls)

I've said this about email spam, and I'll reiterate it here. Freedom
of speech does not trump my personal rights as the owner of the phones
that are being dialed, the person who is billed for the phone lines,
etc.

> and white, since I can envision various emergency scenarios (storm
> evacuation, water contamination, armed-and-dangerous suspect at large,
> etc) where public safety might be aided via mass robo-calls to the
> affected areas.

My clarification should exclude those types of calls. It's rather like
the difference between your Internet provider sending mass unsolicited
emails regarding system outages or sending mass unsolicited emails
telling you how wonderful their great new service is, and you really
ought to try their three-month free trial. (a) is ok, (b) is not.

JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/
Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net
PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED)
Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The trouble here, Steve, is that like
telephones, email requires *two* parties to make it work, unlike other
utility services. How you use your electric, or water, or gas has no
affect on me at all. How you use your *telephone* or *email* does have
an effect on me. With no one to communicate with, my telephone and
email are useless. Not so with my other utility services. I quite
agree that telemarketing phone calls are a scourge, but like email,
what you think is a useful communication, I think is spam. So where
do we start your rights and end my rights? PAT]

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