Saturday, September 27, 2003

Ban them! Ban them all!

It would be hard not to have noticed that the legislative branch and the judicial branch are locking horns for and against the baning of unsolicited telesales calls. No matter what the House and Senate representatives say, commercial interests have won cases over and over again to show that discrimination between commercial and non-commercial free-speech doesn't cut it in the courts. Personally I don't have a problem with cutting out all unsolicited calls but of course the government is trying to protect its own secret little weapon in mind control - opinion polls.

Without the "political calls" loophole in the telesales call ban we would have no more opinion polls - period. So they have to grandfather in the non-profits and unions and are too afraid to cut them all out and call the telesales people's bluffs. The telesales people have the government by the short and curlies, because they know that the government will never pressure the Supreme Court into okaying discrimination against "commercial free-speech". It'll be fun to watch them squirm but you know who'll lose out of course - you, and me and every member of the proliteriat phone answering masses.

So I say: ban them, ban them all! I don't want any unsolicited phone calls in my house, not commercial, not political, not for profit and not for non-profit. It'll make life much easier. If your unsolicited electrons ring my bell, be it on the phone or in my email its as if you were banging on my door or tapping on my window to make your point. Well listen to my point - I don't want to hear you. I'm not in the street, I'm not at speakers corner, I'm not reading the paper, I'm not watching TV. If you want to communicate with me then put up your web site, allow me to opt in for you email and then allow me to opt out if I'm not interested. Otherwise I never, ever want to hear from you any more than you want me to call you at 8am in the morning or 8pm at night.

If telesales don't get a clue I wont be surprised if the next computer virus will include an autodialer that will call every CEO of every telesales company at 4:00am in the morning and never stop...

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