Re: More on digital postage

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 6:36 PM -0500 2/16/97, Cynthia H. Brown wrote:

>My understanding is that the legislation restricts commercial
>solicitations by phone to:
>
>- certain times of day (not after 9 PM? unsure)
>- one initial call, and no follow-ups if the person explicitly asks
>the caller to never phone this number again (again, unsure of legal
>details)
>
>I don't consider this scenario overly restrictive, since it gives
>_them_ a chance to sell their product, and _me_ a chance to have them
>delete my name from their database.  Unfortunately, without some
>formal means of redress, very few telemarketers seem to remember that
>they are unlikely to find new customers if they call at 7 AM Saturday
>for the third time this month.

I despise telemarketing calls as much as the next one, and I now let my
answering machine do the answering whenever possible, only picking up if
it's a call that sounds interesting. (And my cellular phone number I give
to only a very few people, as I get charged for incoming calls before 7
p.m.)

So, I'm sympathetic to the "problem."

However, I try to always "deconstruct" governmental/regulatory "solutions"
to see if statist encroachment is lurking in the bushes.

In the case of the notion of "have them delete my name from their
database," here are some of the issues:

* The Armour Spam Company buys its data bases from direct marketing firms,
so whose data base is one's name supposed to be removed from? The instance
used by Armour in its February 17th contact, or the "parent index" (which
is itself an instance) controlled by someone else? How does Armour insist
that the data base company from which it bought the data base handle the
removal?

* If the argument is only that Armour Spam Company not repeat a call, this
is generally not a problem, as few companies repeat their telemarketing
pitches; counterexamples doubtless exist, but the general trend is not for
repeat calls, but, rather, for the same data base to be bought by multiple
telemarketing firms.

* And there are "freedom of speech" (important in the U.S., though not
perhaps in other countries lacking an explicit provision in their
constitutions or charters) issues in forcing sellers of legally obtained
data bases to reveal internals, to modify them, etc.

(Again, it is Armour Spam Company that made the offending call, but they,
for this example, only made the call _once_. The fact that N other
companies make similar calls, based on the same data base, is a separable
issue. Unless the collection and sale of legally-accumulated data bases is
regulated, no real remedy exists. I am not, of course, a fan of regulating
data bases, but that's a long and involved issue to discuss.)

>What means of redress would you suggest, in the absence of
>legislation / fines, to someone who has been called repeatedly by a
>telemarketer?  This person is not a current customer and so cannot
>withdraw his/her business.

As I said, I believe the case of repeated calls by the _same_ telemarketer
is unusual. Perhaps others have had different experiences.

And if a particular telemarketer is banned from calling twice, their
solution will be obvious: they'll change their company name, farm out the
calls to a subcontractor, etc. That is, they'll become a different
"corporate instance."

It'll be very tough for any law to keep up with such changes (without
trampling severely on what most of us think of us as basic freedoms).

--Tim May

Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."