Our
View: Toll-free speech
It's
8:30 p.m. on a Sunday night and the phone
rings. He mispronounces your name and asks
for Mr. or Mrs. when you are not married.
He rattles on and on about a service or
product you do not want and certainly do
not need. Is this an invasion of privacy
or is this free speech? Should the courts
of the United States be protecting telemarketers
or the people whose homes they invade?
Last
spring the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act
was passed with 50.6 million people's telephone
numbers signed up to be added to the list.
Telemarketing companies were instantly enraged
and despondent that their flourishing business
of aggravating the stuffing out of anybody
they come in contact with was going down
the toilet. Arguing that the law would cost
a large number of jobs to be forfeit they
attempted to make their case for overturning
it.
But
now a district court judge in Oklahoma is
saying that the Federal Trade Commission
does not have the authority to enforce the
list, and that until they have that authority
specifically granted from Congress, the
bill is considered illegal.
This
is not exactly what the telemarketing companies
had in mind when they sued to stop the implementation
of the do-not-call list; they wanted their
freedom of speech protected. But what in
the world does selling discount long-distance
to a bunch of people who don't care have
to do with the freedom of speech, and how
does this law violate it?
The
idea of whether or not telemarketing should
be protected as free speech and whether
or not this do-not-call legislation violates
that right was not discussed in this ruling,
but the idea is one that at some point may
be brought forward by the telemarketing
companies. What must be remembered is that
there has not been a total ban on calls,
only on that one-fifth of the population
who signed the do-not-call list.
What
the telemarketers must realize is that any
form of invasive speech, such as that on
television or radio that actually comes
into the homes of citizens has always been
more stringently regulated than that speech
which can be avoided or tuned out. But it
is hard to tune out five telephone calls
a day from people who want your money and
your time.
|
