Don't Want a Phonebook? Give Up Your Privacy 357
newscloud writes "Seattle will soon shut down its popular phonebook opt-out website as a result of a costly settlement with Yellow Pages publishers. Going forward, the only way to stop unwanted phonebook deliveries will be to visit the industry's opt out site and provide them with your personal information. They will share it with their clients, most of whom are direct marketing agencies, who in turn commit not to use it improperly. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled in October that The Yellow Pages represent protected free speech of corporations (including Canada's Yellow Media Inc.); defending and settling the lawsuit cost Seattle taxpayers $781,503. The city said the program's popularity led to a reduction of 2 million pounds of paper waste annually."
File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Interesting)
They stop pretty quickly after you do it.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering the same thing. If it isn't littering, then I should be able to throw trash in anyones yard and call it speech.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Informative)
This has already been tested in court against KKK pamphlets... The government has no power to restrict the distribution of racist pamphlets, or for that matter, phone books, just because you don't like them.
Trash.. I think the courts can probably figure out a distinction between waste and actual speech.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that this was a case of the city offering an opt out for the phonebooks. It's not a legitimate 1st amendment issue, there is no right to an audience anywhere in the 1st amendment. Now, had the city made it opt in, that likely would have been different, but the courts seriously fucked up the ruling by suggesting that the people don't have a right to say no to the deliveries through the city's system.
The city wasn't making demands on what the books could contain or preventing them from reaching people that wanted copies, the city was just running an opt out list. The reality is that most people don't use the phonebooks anyways and most of them wind up being used as booster seats or tossed in the recycle bin immediately. I can't recall the last time I looked up a number in the phonebook due to the books not being any more up to date as online listings and less convenient to search.
The courts though decided to find in favor of corporate interests again without any plausible justification for doing so.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Interesting)
The courts decided correctly that this was a violation of the 1st amendment. The government is not allowed to censor speech regardless if that is what the citizens want. The 1st amendment is there to protect unpopular speech. Now you as an audience member are free to ignore the speech. However, you have no right to ask the government to squelch the speech on your behalf. In this particular case, Seattle was using the opt-out website as a way to lower the number of phonebooks that end up filling their landfill.
Seattle should set up phonebook collection sites around the city and encourage its citizens to discard their phonebooks there. Afterwards, Seattle could bill the phonebook companies for the cost of disposing the phonebooks. This way nobody's first amendment rights are being violated and there is a disincentive for the phonebook companies to deliver phonebooks that nobody wants. Economic forces would come into play and eventually the phonebook companies would only want to deliver phonebooks to people that would most likely use them. The only issue being that an ordinance which gives the city to right to demand reimbursement for disposal will need to be passed and survive the tests by the court.
A side-effect of the disposal site program would be the ability for the city to proclaim how many phonebooks are collected as unwanted by the recipients. This public campaign, in theory, would lower the value of yellow book advertising.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm, yes I do in fact have that right, this is fundamentally no different from other unsolicited commercial messages. I don't recall the judges saying there was anything wrong with the CAN SPAM Act. Which is precisely the same thing.
The city government just said that you have to obey the wishes of the people on our list to not receive your messages or face a fine. This is not squashing anybody's freedom of speech. The phone book companies still had any number of ways in which to distribute their books, they just couldn't do so to people that were requesting to opt out.
So, you're saying, that I should have to drive or take the bus to a collection site in order to dispose of the phone book that I didn't want in the first place, because the phonebook companies choose to saddle me with the book I was never consulted on in the first place? That's roughly $20 worth of time and energy right there, even for somebody working for minimum wage taking the bus.
We have the right to free speech, we don't have the right to an audience. By your logic we could never regulate unsolicited commercial messages because you'd be infringing upon the rights of corporate entities to reach their audience.
Re: (Score:3)
The objective of CAN-SPAM and "Do not call" was to address abuses that fell within the FCC's jurisdiction. Since those rules are written in such a way to target only the sources of those abuses and with a clear objective of protecting the recipient from coercion, fraud, or loss of privacy by wire, the courts (so far) has not ruled the laws to be unconstitutional. In each of the court cases, the court found that the rules were targeted and didn't prevent all forms of communication with a consumer.
Now if yel
Re: (Score:3)
By your logic the Do Not Call list is unconstitutional. Just to be clear, is that the point you're making?
In fact if the phone books can't have an opt out list, I suppose the popular No Ads Please stickers so prevalent on mailboxes in my country would be illegal in the US as well.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously, IANAL.
If you have read the decision on the "Do Not Cal" list given by the tenth circuit court, you'd see that the court used a three-prong test to determine constitutionality:
1) The court found that the do-not-call registry addressed the governmental interests in protecting the privacy of an individual within their homes and from abusive and coercive solicitation.
2) The list affected the sources of the majority of the consumer complaints that fell within the governmental agency's jurisdiction while allowing calls from political action committees, charitable organizations, etc, (The law targeted a particular type of abuser).
3) The list didn't restrict more speech than necessary since it was opt-in.
Since unsolicited phonebooks aren't a threat to ones privacy, coercive and does't immediately initiate a sales transaction between the phonebook distributor and the resident, it doesn't satisfy the first prong of the test.
Re: (Score:3)
The courts decided correctly that this was a violation of the 1st amendment. The government is not allowed to censor speech regardless if that is what the citizens want.
The court decided incorrectly. The government is allowed to prevent certain forms of speech, regardless of its content.
For example, I have a right to be secure in my property.
You can have your free speech on your own property, or on public property in permitted ways, but the moment you step on my property, the actions you may take
Re: (Score:3)
Now you as an audience member are free to ignore the speech.
Do you think I have a right to ignore the speech?
Do I have a right to tell the speaker, please don't enter my property and leave your trash?
Do I have a right to tell a third party to ask the speaker to not enter my property and leave their trash?
Now, could that third party be the city?
I don't see how the city is censoring anyone. They are just saying, "This person requested you not deliver your trash to their address"
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Interesting)
They have a right to deliver it to your door step, and you have a right to deliver it to there door step.
So get people to either take the phone book to employees houses, or put them in front of their business door.
preferably many at once.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly, they cannot - Because phone books do not count as fucking speech.
Sick of this "corporate speech" BS. We can't have campaign finance reform because CORPORATE SPEECH. Now we can't opt out of phonebooks because CORPORATE SPEECH. But try to protest at the G8 summit, and you'll get to see just how much HUMAN speech matters anymore.
We need to end the rights of incorporation now. We can come up with a short list of powers granted to companies to facilitate doing business, but when real live natural born humans take a back seat to fictional entities, time to change the laws before things start burning.
Re: (Score:3)
If corporations want the rights, they should also have the responsibilities.
So if an employee is killed through negligence for example the corporation would have everything they own held (as in all factories stopped from producing and such) for the duration of the prison sentence that a natural person would get for the same thing....
The same thing for any other crime that a corporation does. If they do not want that then they should not have the rights either.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Members of the boards of directors for the Association of Directory Publishers [adp.org] or the Local Search Association [localsearc...iation.org] clearly love phone books. It's worth looking to see if any are local to you, so you can help them out...
Re: (Score:3)
You really need to take it a step further. Post a sign on your property (by the front door, most likely) saying, in essence, that leaving any un-requested non-governmental (like tax notices, town hall meetings, and other municipal notices) material is assumed to be trash and will be billed $500 (or some other absurd amount just under the small-claims cap) per item. Then make sure you have a camera recording that space with the sign in frame. When the people come to drop off the phone books, send the comp
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Informative)
Probably because the firms contract out to independent workers(read transient workers) to place these signs. They probably have written or verbal instructions not to place signs in any public space, which the firms then use to avoid prosecution. The people being paid some fraction of a dollar sign will be liable to the prosecution. But then how do we get them, and how do they pay?
The yellow pages are certainly the same way. The contractors have to deliver to every house. They are probably spot checked. If I put a sign saying that anything placed on my lawn will be subject to a $500 clean up fee will I be able to collect? Probably not from the yellow pages, even if the small claims court would allow such a thing. No I would have to hire someone to track down the transient worker, maybe put a lein against the truck that was used in the crime, and then what. Not much.
They way to stop the telephone directory waste is to stop using them. If it was not still a relevant advertising model, then firms would not be paying to advertise in it. Firms must be getting leads from these directories, otherwise why would they pay to advertise. It will be a problem that corrects itself in the next generation.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It is illegal to post signs in public space
That'll be why the suggestion was "Post a sign on your property".
Re: (Score:3)
This isn't a public space we're talking about. It's clearly private property, beyond the reach of the typical easement.
In Canada, it's not. It's considered semi-public. Because it allows access to your front door(or side door, depending on which is your primary entrance), and your front door is considered an 'invitation' to allow access to people to come and visit you. This was upheld by the SCC. Your backdoor/yard, is private.
Re: (Score:3)
Your address alone should be sufficient. Your name should not be required (nor any other information) since it's the address they're delivering the books to. They don't need to know who lives there (even if they already do) or what their "marketing preferences" are (even if they already do). They can send a bulk flier in the mail once per year to let you know how to get one should you want/need one.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally recycle bins don't go to landfills...
But generally the yellow pages seem to conveniently come on trash day. I just toss them into my recycle bin, and be done with it. They are becoming irrelevant, and eventually people will stop advertising with them.
Right now they are trying to use what amounts to extortion tactics.
Formerly: OK, we aren't going to use your product, so don't waste your money on giving it to use.
Now: OK, you're going to get our product no matter what, unless you want to be annoyed to death.
Tossing it in the recycle/trash bin is less annoying and costs them more money, so I promote that option, since they want to be bastards about it.
Re: (Score:3)
Straight into the recycle bin if you don't want it. When the landfill operators note that they have truckload after truckload of them, someone will make the phone company change the way they do things.
I've often thought that junk mailers should be taxed to pay for the cost of disposing of their junk mail. Currently (in the UK) the council tax payer foots the bill.
Re: (Score:3)
In the UK (again), there's a general opt-out service: http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/ [mpsonline.org.uk] (Mail Preference Service). It works very well, I don't get any junk mail. There's also the telephone preference service, which stops junk phone calls.
The phone book is very slim anyway (1.5cm?), but I'm not sure where I would go to avoid getting it once per year.
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Insightful)
The city did take notice. And lose the resulting lawsuit.
It's one thing to not read TFA, but dude, you didn't even read the summary.
Re:Why do you need a phone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like many other people, I maintain a open wifi connection specifically to provide for public access. Likewise, I maintain an open 144 MHz repeater, and a while ago, a packet BBS that could take and deliver email. I also write free software such as this [fyngyrz.com]. When I mean something to be free, or shared for free, there's no negative to taking advantage of that. When I write commercial software, I make sure that I've made the transaction required clear.
Many commercial and/or public establishments make open wifi available; coffee houses, McDonalds, libraries, etc. Doesn't hurt a thing to use those connections.
Now if you prefer not sharing, that's fine -- that's your choice. If you want your connection(s) closed, then by all means close them. The point of an open connection is that it's open. Such things can be used responsibly. A text message, simple text email or IM is absolutely insignificant to any particular wifi connection. A compressed voice connection isn't horrible, bandwidth-wise, either. The more open connections there are, the better it all works as far as portability goes.
Just FYI, the financial benefit I was talking about was the lack of a phone bill; in such a situation, you need to keep your own wifi available, obviously, and you can certainly use that, and keep it closed, without using anyone else's if you want to. You know, it was only a few years ago that almost no one had a portable phone. We survived just fine that way.
Perhaps you might consider learning to share a bit. You know, like open source or free software. Or not. I don't care. I posted to offer those who were open minded a change to consider an opportunity. Not to convert anyone. I'm already phone-bill free, you see.
As for stealing, I'm pretty sure you don't know what that word means. :)
Re:File a police complaint for littering (Score:4, Interesting)
Not-for Profit Organization idea
corporations are not people (Score:3, Informative)
Corporations are not people, and do not get natural rights such as the right to free speech. [movetoamend.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Aside from the fact that this is off topic, why not just vote for the politician based on the politician him/herself?
Lobbyists can't vote. Corporations can't vote. You can.
Besides, if that movetoamend organization got their way, wouldn't they be forbidden from doing exactly what they are trying to do now? Even if they provide special protections for themselves or for labor unions, then you can bet your ass that lobbyists will reorganize themselves in the same way, making the entire effort wasted. I also lik
Re: (Score:2)
I initially read "voting for $X" as "being given X dollars to vote" rather than as a Perl variable...
Re: (Score:2)
So did I and, sadly, it made sense.
"I'm contributing $Y to the political party I support."
"Oh yeah? Well, I support the opposite political party so I'm going to contribute $X where X > Y!"
Re: (Score:2)
Right, and that's what annoys me about this whole thing. People vote for their candidates based on the most absurd reasons.
I think the problem is all of the "get out the vote" campaigns. People voting on issues they don't understand is more damaging than not voting at all.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not trying to beat up on the voter. What I'm trying to do is to encourage people to think before they vote, or just not vote at all. As I said earlier, voting on an issue you don't understand is more damaging than not voting at all. I know, this is an unpopular thing to say (especially the way Sean Penn and the rest of Hollywood publicly lambasted Stone and Parker when they said this) because everybody is constantly going around espousing the virtues of voting - even if that means voting on something th
Re: (Score:3)
Furthermore, free speech requires communication between consenting parties. Spam is not free speech.
Re: (Score:3)
Corporations are not people, and do not get natural rights such as the right to free speech. [movetoamend.org]
A corporation is nothing more than an organized group of people. Since individuals have a right to free speech, then you can't remove their right to free speech simply because they want to use a different name (the corporate name) instead of their own.
Re: (Score:3)
But as a corporation, they enjoy limited liability from the consequences of their actions and speech. Moreover, they enjoy tax protections not available to non-corporate entities.
Maybe you can't remove their right to free speech just because they want to use a different name, but you can remove their special legal protections and tax status. Then, for organizations that voluntarily choose to incorporate for legal protections and favorable tax status, they can be asked to voluntarily relinquish some legal
Re: (Score:3)
The Citizens United case has absolutely NOTHING to do with the concept of corporate personhood. The fundamental issue is the power of the federal government to restrict speech by a group of people as opposed to an individual. Conflating the two is completely disingenuous. The laws and court decisions affirming the "corporate person" idea date back to the late 1800s!
Our Right to free speech isn't a gift that was granted to people by the government. It is instead, a strict limit on government power.
"Con
Just lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Never give up privacy, even under duress. When this kind of thing happens, meet them on a level playing field and corrupt their database with junk info.
Re: (Score:3)
So just visit their website and lie about everything. Make the information offensive, even, or obviously false (all except the address, I guess, which they have to have).
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie [wikipedia.org] agree [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:2)
But then you probably violate the terms of service of the website, which, in turn,
makes you a criminal under the computer fraud and abuse act.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is why I actually received some junkmail in the late 90s. I used my actual address but my name was "Ihate Webforms". It was a bit too obvious I guess. They purged it fairly quickly.
There's always the more subtle approach of misspelling your own name, especially when the company claims "we don't sell your information". Then a month later... there it is. The wrong name.
BTW, I've been on the other end of this as a temp worker. Post-cards filled out by teenagers as pranks actually brightened our day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It'd be a bit scorched-earth; but I wonder if their input validation is good enough to keep a, er, 'motivated', individual from seeding the database with strings that could be construed to create a hostile work environment for the junk mailer's employees? 'Offensive' can get 'expensive' in certain workplace contexts...
recycle bin (Score:2)
I just use them to weight down my recycle bin so it doesn't blow away. I will not give out my address to them.
Community erffort (Score:3, Informative)
Collect all the unwanted phonebooks and deliver them to the phone company regional office, preferably piled up in front of the door.
Re:Community erffort (Score:5, Informative)
They get them to. By the pallet. We don't want them any more than the public does. They used to drop them off at everyones desks until it became such a common complaint that the facilities guys receive the pallet, never even unwrap it and push it strait into the dumpster. Phonebooks are created and distributed by a select few companies who lobby local officials to keep decades old laws in place that require phone companies continue to supply them with data and allow the delivery of their "product"
Remember: Phonebooks don't come from the phone company. They are separate entities. Some are owned by phone companies in part or whole, but rarely is the phone-book you received produced by your actual phone company.
Only really useful for disasters or power outages (Score:3)
Between my cellphone + computer, if I want to find someone or a business I just run a search.
But, recently there have been issues where we lost power + internet/data, yet will had access to a phone. In which case, I guess it's useful then. Or as fireplace fuel if there is a true emergency.
Sure, there are people that NEED them. The elderly person who never learned to use a computer, the poor that don't have internet, the random dude that just doesn't like the internet in general, et.
But forcing everyone to get it is kind of lame. Then again, it's no big deal to trash it or recycle it.
Re:Only really useful for disasters or power outag (Score:4, Informative)
But, recently there have been issues where we lost power + internet/data, yet will had access to a phone. In which case, I guess it's useful then.
If you've still got cell service -- even if (especially if) you don't have data service -- text your query to 466453 ('GOOGLE') and get an answer by SMS.
Take .... many phone books to the court house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Take .... many phone books to the court house. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong. That would just mean the taxpayers have to pay for removing them. Leave them on the front yards of the judges involved.
Re:Take .... many phone books to the court house. (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't you been paying attention lately? It's free speech for corporate entities with legal departments, not for you. You'll get arrested and be declaring bankruptcy before your trial even starts. Not to mention kicked around a bit on your way to the holding cell.
Profitability? (Score:5, Informative)
If nobody reads the damn thing, how can it be profitable? And if it isn't profitable, why are they distributing it?
Unless people actually *are* reading it. If so, then how is this a waste?
And we're not going to run out of trees any faster than we'll run out of potatoes. Trees used for paper are grown in farms [blogspot.com], and are selectively bred for that purpose (the resulting product is of higher quality and cheaper than from wild trees.) Paper production isn't the reason for decreasing numbers of trees, and recycling paper is a huge waste of time and resources.
The only reason there are fewer trees in the world (and not in the US btw, the number of trees we have in the US has been steadily growing for decades now) is because jungle territory is being cut down to make way for real-estate.
That said, I'm not sure why the politicians would make an issue of trying to reduce the number of phone books. Just treat it like any other junk mail: send it right to the trash. And you only have to do it once a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Profitability? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the readers are not the ones paying for it.
The businesses that advertise are. Often small businesses will advertise hoping for some result and since the cost is so low many such businesses will advertise.
So then my taxes have to pay to dispose of their waste? Can I mail my trash to you to dispose of?
Re: (Score:2)
Right, and eventually those businesses will realize that they gain nothing out of advertising in it.
Re: (Score:3)
advertising in the pages is very cheap and usually sold as part of a package deal by an advertising agency, of which the yellow pages portion is a very minor part of the overall cost.
Re:Profitability? It works (Score:3)
I help small businesses entrepreneurs and can offer a different perspective. I've never had to train a janitor, barber, dispatcher, tow-truck operator or politician how to use a phone book. (or how to use one safely, or how to properly-configure or update their telephone to connect to a particular phone number)
The economics of yellow pages still work. About a quarter of the volume for a couple IT support business I'm familiar with...comes from phone book ads. Which, per customer, provide an incredibly c
Re: (Score:2)
If nobody reads the damn thing, how can it be profitable? And if it isn't profitable, why are they distributing it?
They're paid by the businesses to be listed. Zero people can read it, and it will still be highly profitable as long as their sales people can convince businesses otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter if you read it or not, they got their money for the ads in the books. It's just like SPAM. Company X pays little Johnny to send out 50 million spam messages. 99.8% of those spam messages were ignored, the other 0.2% were read and drew in some customers. Company X makes profit.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure why the politicians would make an issue of trying to reduce the number of phone books. Just treat it like any other junk mail: send it right to the trash. And you only have to do it once a year.
From TFA:
"The city said the program's popularity led to a reduction of 2 million pounds of paper waste annually."
and as follow up: How much environmental damage was done to MAKE the phone books? We are talking about people that didn't want the phone books in the first place.
It won't work, either (Score:5, Informative)
We attempted to opt-out of Yellow Pages deliveries in our local area in California, but it doesn't work. The guys who throw these things on everyone's front porch do not care whether you are on the list or not. I'm not even sure that they have a list. You will still get phone books.
At what point does free speech become littering? (Score:5, Interesting)
There have always been limitations on "free speech" when it comes to pollution. Even an individual isn't allowed to rant about the lizard men with a megaphone at 3 AM.
The phone books are put on private property without permission. Is there some law that gives them permission? They're welcome, I suppose, to stand on the sidewalk and read the phone book at me, if they want, or even to stand there with the book open. I suppose they could pay the Post Office to mail it to me, since they have a special legal exemption.
If they've got some kind of blanket exemption, then of course an opt-out is going to violate privacy. And if this is the case, it sounds like they need to eliminate the blanket exemption, and I don't see "free speech" being a defense against that, since your right to speech ends where my property begins.
Re: (Score:2)
Even an individual isn't allowed to rant about the lizard men with a megaphone at 3 AM.
As a former resident of the Lakeview Apartment complex and participant in frequent phone calls to local officials in regards to afore mention megaphone, I can assure you that a sufficiently coherent individual with paranoid schizophrenia can, in fact, rant about whatever she chooses at 3am with, in this case, a P.A. system in her livingroom without being arrested.
If you don't want phone books in your yard... (Score:3)
...you must help me defeat the Lizard Men once and for all.
And I was out there no later than 2:45.
Disposal fee (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what happens if as a private citizen I post a notice on my property saying that any unsolicited material deposited on my property will incur a disposal fee of $100 per item, and then bill the YP company for my disposing of the trash they left without permission?
Reminder: freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to use someone else's property without permission. You want to speak, use public property or hire your own hall.
Re: (Score:2)
They won't respond to your bill. You might however be able to take them to court over it.
I would say they are trespassing to deliver it. If they want to have the postman deliver them fine, but I am not giving them permission to step foot on my property.
Re: (Score:3)
I would say they are trespassing to deliver it. If they want to have the postman deliver them fine, but I am not giving them permission to step foot on my property.
Not worth trying to keep them out. There are many laws that allow some people to walk up to your door. I tend to believe this explanation, explaining how it varies by local ordinances:
http://www.newlifelc.com/view.php?id=20130223123856AAHAyYH
But even if it is with purely commercial interests, don't expect to change the world, let alone Google:
http://www.itworld.com/legal/129524/google-admits-trespassing-street-view-hit-crushing-1-fine
Re: (Score:3)
General interpretations I've been told are:
Trespassing is generally defined as presence on property without permission. However, you are generally legally allowed to make a reasonable attempt to establish "permission", and doing so involves a reasonable attempt to contact the owner. Being caught on my land a half mile from the house is not a reasonable attempt and is trespassing. But approaching my front door and knocking is reasonable, and is not trespassing. But if I answer the door and deny permission, y
Market really will solve this. (Score:5, Insightful)
How long can they sell advertisement in books nobody looks at?
Just ignore them. They save me from grabbing the free local rag to start my BBQ. Weather I burn Yellow pages or Yellow journalism it's the same amount of paper. This way the 'News and Review' doesn't get a wrong impression and think anybody is actually reading them.
Right now, business's are buying yellow pages adds because they always have. Give it a little while.
Re: (Score:2)
TinFoil The local free rag in Seattle is want's this law. So they can sell adds based on BBQ starting circulation. /TinFoil
You still can't get a white pages listing? (Score:2)
Explain (Score:3)
Thanks for putting the opt out link in the summary (Score:2)
I hadn't bothered with this before; I just threw the things into the recycle bin as I got them - but now I'm annoyed enough to use their "official" opt-out form.
I'm not sure why people are complaining about having to provide their address to do this, though... how else do you expect this to work?
Re: (Score:2)
It is not the address people object to giving out, it is the other fields they demand to have. Name, phone number, email and the rest.
They only need address, nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point.
BTW for people who might think they can use a fake address - your email address has to be functional, at least at the time you register - you can't complete registration (which means you can't opt out of anything) until you click on the follow-up email.
Re: (Score:2)
Use mailinator.com
That should save you some hassle.
Re: (Score:3)
Use mailinator.com That should save you some hassle.
Now we only need "phoninator". That might be a heck of a business opportunity for someone who could figure out how to make money at it. Or at least convince someone to buy them up before the bills come due.
Corporate Rights Trump Citizens (Score:2)
Personally I think the law should have stuck, but since it didn't, let's look at what we can do with what we have:
1. Work to change legal recognition of corporate personhood.
2. Establish laws that limit the ability of similar lawsuits to be brought.
3. Use our own free speech to criticize the companies who pull stunts like this. This lawsuit is a stain on their brand.
Post a sign (Score:2)
Issue solved.
So deliver them (Score:2)
My dad still has wood powered heating and phone book pages are really great for starting it.
Opt out of junk mail? Are you nuts, that's what I use for fueling my stove.
Simple and worthwhile solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The idiots forcing you to receive worthless phone book have wasted money.
2) The idiots sending you other worthless junk have wasted money.
3) The Post Office gets money.
Phone books aren't the only info ripoff (Score:2)
If you want to opt-out of direct mailing, not only do you have to give them your personal information, they charge $1 for it! [ftc.gov] The actual site: https://www.dmachoice.org/ [dmachoice.org]
Apartments? (Score:2)
How does an opt-out even work for apartment buildings? At my apartment, they just drop off a big stack of phone books at the front entrance. There are no names or addresses on them or any other way to tell which one is for which person. Usually they just sit there for a couple weeks (with maybe one or two taken by residents) until the building manager gets tired of seeing them and he tosses them in the recycle bin. Since they seem to drop off more phone books than there are apartments in the building, I can
Re: (Score:2)
Weapon for clubbing the phone book publishers to death.
Re: (Score:2)
- drawing an above average length pageflip-cartoon
- weight for flattening out crumpled pieces of paper
Re:Other uses for phone books (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
According the paper for my local recycling pick-up, they won't take phone books. Go figure.
Re: (Score:2)
The fibers in paper break down a bit with each recycling cycle(and the color generally drifts a bit, unless you bleach it good and hard, which costs money and isn't great for the fibers or the fishies) since phone books are already printed on total shit-grade paper, and contain a lot of ink, they probably reduce the value of the recycled pulp for any but the most undemanding applications.
If the ink doesn't have any problematic metals(not always a safe assumption historically, probably better now) pallets of
Re: (Score:2)
I'm forced to pay for recycling in my area, so they get whatever I decide to put in the thing. Typically that's trash that is too large to fit in my trash can.
Re: (Score:2)
We used to use the stacks of phone books that would appear periodically at my last dayjob as monitor stands. one or two of them propped the monitor up to eye level. The phone book "fairy" would bring close to a pallet-full of phone books and they'd sit there for months, but for the few "monitor-propping" ones taken, then magically disappear when it became clear they were excess (or the appropriate manager got tired of seeing them sitting there..). At home, we still get them every so often, and they go strai
Re:Hire a truck.. (Score:5, Funny)
Make giant paper mache/spit wads and launch them at the corporate building with a trebuchet. Figure out where the executive suite is and call that the bullseye.
Re: (Score:2)
Why inconvenience the poor bastards on the cleaning crew for whatever office space they rent?
Surely home delivery of unwanted phone books, being protected speech and all, should be acceptable for the corporate officers responsible?
Re: (Score:2)
your idea is better than mine. Though I'd drench them first, so that they can't try to reuse them.
in what you say? That's up to the individual, but I live not far from a rather foul smelling river that wouldn't be traceable back to me...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I disagree. Once it's been established that leaving phone books at a property constitutes speech, then I would argue that protest speech (dumping them all at once) is more protection worthy than commercial speech (leaving one for use).
Re: (Score:2)
Just be sure to scrawl offensive messages on your trash before dumping it, to ensure that it is clearly identifiable as political speech.
Re: (Score:2)
We hated them already, why do you think the opt out was taken up by the city council? I'll give you a hint it's not just because they're green.
Re: (Score:3)
The Founders recognized that the institution of government is the primary, and perhaps only mechanism by which individuals are ever deprived of their Rights. Therefore, our rights are elaborated as explicit limitations on government power.
Corporations were created BY government. Rather than granting government more power to deal with the monster which government created, we should limit the government's power to grant special legal privileges in the first place.
A corporate charter is basically a contract