Telemarketing should be banned

The first amendment states as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." From this you infer a bizarre notion. To you, this seems to state that it is acceptable to invade someone else's privacy, even while they are in their own home. The first amendment makes no such claim. While it does state that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, nowhere does it state that others should be forced to hear said speech. In your argument you state "I do not think that telemarketers should have unlimited power to call you, at some point calls eventually become harassing." With this I wholeheartedly agree. The problem is that the telemarketers have already crossed the line. They do call at inconvenient hours, they do have power to call total strangers whenever they feel like it (which is pretty close to unlimited), and their phone calls have become harassing to many individuals. In my opening argument I mentioned that the "Do Not Call" registries are ineffective. On this point you wish to split hairs and distinguish between a "Do Not Call" registry and a "Do Not Call" list. I will accept this distinction. However, this is not a simple solution as you claim. In theory, you are correct in stating that telemarketers cannot call someone on this list. You are also correct "in theory" when you state "A company who calls you to solicit products must honor your request to put you on their do not call list if you so ask, and they are not allowed to call you any more." The problem is that things that should occur in theory do not occur in practice. Here is a link to an article from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com... In this article it states that the majority of people on the Do Not Call list still receive telemarketing calls. Here is an additional survey done by AARP. It also serves to show that the Do Not Call lists are ineffectual. http://assets.aarp.org... Your other solution was to tell them to not call anymore. You claim that they MUST honor this request. Unfortunately, the telemarketers also failed to receive this message. Here is a story where someone did request to be removed and it failed to work. He called up ABC News to get it stopped. http://abclocal.go.com... You also claim that the individual can sue if the telemarketers do not honor the request. That much is true, but when the caller ID only shows "unknown name, unknown number" it can be hard to know which telemarketer violated the request and consequently which one to sue. Furthermore, in order to sue in the first place, you have to keep extensive phone logs as proof. Why should I or anyone else have to go through all of this trouble to stop a stranger from calling me? Here is an article from the New York Times: http://query.nytimes.com... In it, John J. Miller states "Current law already requires telemarketers to remove names from call lists upon request. I've been doing this for years, but the phone keeps ringing. When I ask a caller not to try me again, the response is usually a click. By refusing to honor these appeals, a telemarketer risks being sued, but a consumer's success in court requires keeping extensive phone logs, and damages are limited -- $500 is the usual amount. There are people who sue successfully, but it sounds like an awful lot of trouble for those irritated at telemarketers for robbing them of family time in the first place." I could not agree more. The time it takes to sue, keep phone logs, and go to court are almost not worth it for the average $500. If I had my druthers, I'd rather receive no telemarketing calls than be forced to go through this whole song and dance. Now in your argument, you mention the first amendment and rights. I am a huge advocate of rights. But something that should be understood is that rights are supposed to pertain to everyone equally. Crank calls have been made illegal by many states. In essence, telemarketers can be considered crank callers in my opinion. It is a total stranger calling you, and saying things that you don't want to hear. But the joke is on us, because while any other individual making such a call can get in trouble with the law, the telemarketers are exempt. Furthermore, if any individual called and pestered like telemarketers after being repeatedly told not to, they could be arrested for harassment. But not telemarketers. The best you can get from them is a measly fine. So why the unfairness? Why are telemarketers able to get away with these things that normal individuals cannot get away with? Isn't it time we treat telemarketers like everyone else? The behavior of telemarketers would be illegal for everyone else. It is high time that such behavior became illegal for telemarketers as well.