A Sign on My Phone

As of today, it looks like the National Do Not Call Registry is on. Matt Thomas and I had a discussion about it last night. I had been wondering for some time whether I really did think that the registry was a legimate thing for the government to impose. I now think it is.

The Direct Marketing Association argued last week that the registry would restrict their constitutional right to free speech. It does not. The DMA is free to speak however they want. In the exact same way, protesters are allowed to picket on the street outside your house, exercising their First Amendment right. They are not, however, allowed to walk up to your front door and yell at you.

If you don’t want someone to enter your property, you just have to put a “no trespassing” and/or “no soliciters” sign up. If someone fails to heed this sign, you can call the police and have them arrested. Even without the sign, if someone comes to your door you can tell them to leave your property or you’ll consider it trespassing. Delivery men are allowed only if you’ve ordered from them, and you have to sign a form to let FedEX or UPS leave something at your door. Clearly people are not allowed on your property if you don’t want them, and this doesn’t inhibit their right to speech.

Is making a phone call in a way entering their property? I think it would have to be, but I think this point is where the Do Not Call Registry question hinges. Putting a sign on your law forbids door-to-door salesman from conducting their business, and this is an established and valid practice. The problem is that you can’t put up a “no soliciters” sign on your phone. The Registry is just legislation that draws this analogy. By this merit, I think it is an acceptable law.

Imported comments:

I think the free speech argument is related to the fact that the law limits only certain kinds of calls; i.e., charities can still call you, but for-profits can’t.

There’s also the question of whether or not the federal government should be involved in this at all.

I despise telemarketers as much as the next person; in fact, we may ditch our landline all together because it’s basically a sewer for telemarketers now anyway, and we have cell phones to use instead.

But even though we all agree that telemarketers are a problem, I don’t know if federal legislation is the solution.

I still deny that the registry restricts free speech, because as I said it in no way restricts the DMA from saying what they want to say, it just imposes restrictions. If you wanted to hold a rally in a park with loudspeakers and marching bands, you’d have to get a permit. That’s a restriction on the forum for your speech, but not on the speech.

The do-not-call list is just the no soliciting sign of telephones, so it should be inacted. If you don’t want to talk to them, then you shouldn’t have to.