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To: Modernman
Phone service includes only legal phone calls- by signing up for a phone contract, you don't give up the right to charge/sue callers for illegal types of phone calls, such as threats, obscenity, intentional infliction of emotional distress etc.

People don't like calls from telemarketers so that had them declared illegal. Now you want to justify a new federal entitlement (phone service without calls from telemarketers) because those calls were just declared illegal. Similarly, people don't like getting calls from their mothers-in-law (intential infliction of emotional distress) so they have those declared illegal.

All you are doing is rationalizing your dislike of telemarketers into various forms of law breaking. But your case (and everybody else's) is so weak, you have to keep switching from one law to another. So now "intentional infliction of emotional distress" is against Federal law.

336 posted on 11/12/2003 9:51:00 AM PST by palmer (They've reinserted my posting tube)
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To: palmer
People don't like calls from telemarketers so that had them declared illegal.

People don't like receiving threatening phone calls, so that has been made illegal. People don't like being defrauded over phone lines, so that has been made illegal. What's the difference here? Things are made illegal if (a) society decides the behavior in question is unnaceptable and (b) there is no constitutional right to engage in such behavior. There is no constitutional right to commit trespass, even if you commit trespass while exercising a constitutional right. You don't have the right to exercise your second amendment rights on my property.

Similarly, people don't like getting calls from their mothers-in-law (intential infliction of emotional distress) so they have those declared illegal.

No, they haven't. Intentional infliction of emotional distress is a common-law tort that is exceedingly rare. It covers incredibly offensive beahvior (like calling someone as a prank and telling them their wife has been killed). I only used it as an example of how certain uses of the phone are illegal and/or actionable and how crimes committed over the phone are really no different than crimes committed in the non-electronic world.

All you are doing is rationalizing your dislike of telemarketers into various forms of law breaking. But your case (and everybody else's) is so weak, you have to keep switching from one law to another.

No, I'm pointing out that banning telemarketers from calling people on the FDNC list can be justified in several different ways. I personally think this falls best under trespass laws.

342 posted on 11/12/2003 10:04:21 AM PST by Modernman (It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again)
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