
San Francisco Set to Ban Unsolicited Phone Books - nowsourcing
http://www.good.is/post/san-francisco-set-to-ban-unsolicited-phone-books
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dkarl
Please let this spread nationwide and be generalized to more forms of
advertising. It's just littering at this point.

I know somebody pays for them, but people pay for their fast food wrappers,
too, and they aren't allowed to leave them on other people's porches. I paid
for the beer in my fridge, but I'm not going to leave a bag of empties hanging
from my neighbor's doorknob.

I really don't know how the legal exception works, how the law distinguishes
one act of spewing worthless crap into the environment from another, but it
should be possible to cut down on the constant flyers under wiper blades,
takeout menus on doorknobs, etc., and still let people put up posters about
lost pets, local missing persons, and neighborhood garage sales.

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blhack
One of the big problems with the [related] abuse of the mail system is that it
is effectively a denial of service attack against legitimate messages. Nearly
everything that comes into my mail slot gets binned.

I figure: if somebody cares enough about sending me a slip of paper, they will
either send it Fed Ex, or they will email it to me; nobody uses the postal
system for anything other than trash.

In fact, I wonder what the legality of literally mailing garbage is. USPS
flat-rate boxes are something like $5, and I could fit a lot of apple cores,
orange peels, and coffee grounds into one of those things. In fact, my sister
is soon due to have a kid. I'd pay to have her mail the dirty diapers to
whoever keeps sending me paper spam.

That this is an accepted abuse of the postal system is absurd.

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MichaelGG
<http://pe.usps.com/Archive/HTML/DMMArchive0810/C023.htm>

It seems to indicate that unless it's for a medical reason (and labelled
accordingly?) you're not allowed to send human or animal feces, so the diaper
idea is out.

Other garbage would depend on the risk of the actual garbage. Empty containers
and so on is likely to be fine. Rotting organic material could be iffy.

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phaedrus
When my wife and I moved out of our apartment a few years ago, after most of
the stuff was moved out including the computers, we happened to need to look
up a phone number. It _literally_ did not occur to us that there was even a
way to look up a phone number without using the internet. Meanwhile we were
tripping over a pile of dusty yellow books that were one of the last things we
left in the apartment (and weren't taking with us).

After 20 minutes I finally remembered "oh, that's what those yellow books are
for". It's just how infrequently we've cracked open a phone book - which is to
say never since 1993. I can tell you, for anyone in their 20's, that phone
book goes straight from the doorstep to the dustbin, just like the paper
newspaper. Good riddance!

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brk
I would love to see this nationwide. Every time another 3" thick unwanted
phonebook is left by my mailbox it just irritates the hell out of me. I can't
believe there are still enough businesses that want to advertise in yellow
pages to make it a viable industry for ONE providers, much less 3 or 4.

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stretchwithme
Isn't crazy that people are allowed to dump things on your house and car? And
this is protected because somehow it is free speech? Forget that it forces you
to clean up afterwards.

So companies can impose costs upon you. You have to be responsible and see the
garbage to its rightful place. And deal with garbage all over the urban
landscape.

But if we changed this and required companies to ask first, this would
supposedly be too costly for them. But only because we've been forced to
subsidize their activities all along.

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tzs
Seattle has already done this, except in Seattle it is an opt-out list,
similar to the "do not call" list.

There was a story about this on NPR today, and they compared Seattle's
approach to San Francisco's. The SF approach is drawing a lot of opposition
from advocates and aid groups from the poor and the elderly. The fear is that
there are a lot of people who do not use online directories and depend on
their phone books to look up numbers.

In general, when you have some service that at one point nearly everyone
depends on, and then as time passes many people start needing less and less,
it seems to me to make the most sense to switch it to an opt-out service for
existing people so that you don't disrupt those who still depend on it, and
make it opt-in for new people.

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premchai21
Actually, I'm in the target audience for phone books. I love receiving those
(within reason). I wish I had more right now.

Why? Two main reasons. One is for actually looking up local telephone numbers.
I prefer this to looking them up on the Web in many cases: the paper book
doesn't call home, the business directory is harder to game, and it's all pre-
localized. And it doesn't take away the choice of looking things up on the Web
if I feel it's necessary, at the cost of some extra traceability &c.

The second reason is that I use extras as structural supports. Monitor too low
(for instance)? Wrap phone book in duct tape. Now it's a brick. Construct
environmental modifications out of phone bricks. They're relatively light
while being solid, and they're already bound together, so you don't have the
trouble of trying to make the rectilinear shape ex nihilo. I suppose I could
buy stacks of newsprint paper or something, but going out and buying things is
awkward, and phone books are often distributed free, so I'm only paying for
time and duct tape.

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corin_

      When's the last time you looked up a number in the phone book? For us, it was probably around 1999.
    

Actually I like having it downstairs, I find it quicker than looking up on my
phone, and saves the hassle of getting to a computer. That said, I do agree
that shipping that many trees to so many people who don't want them is pretty
awful.

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blahedo
I actually use my phone book at least two or three times a year; partly
because some of the information just isn't easily findable online (I live in a
smaller city) and partly because it's sometimes just more convenient to look
it up in the book.

That said, I don't know that I need an updated book every single year.

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brandall10
Awesome.

A few years back I was on the board of my HOA (77 unit loft structure in
downtown San Diego) and this was an issue that came up every quarter. We
repeatedly asked for them to stop doing it - that it was wasteful, that it was
unwanted solicitation against our CC&Rs, didn't matter. The phone company left
77 phone books in our lobby every time. Within the same day we had maintenance
dump the whole lot in the recycling bin.

The main issue is that the recipients of the books aren't the clients, the
advertisers are. That this is unwanted activity makes no difference to them.
As long as they can claim to deliver a phone book, they can use that as a
statistic for advertisers. If you want to stop this activity one tactic might
be to alert major advertisers.

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mikeryan
I keep telling my wife that if I were Mayor, that it would be legal to leaflet
cars, but it would be a $5 fine for every one found on the ground.

Sticking those things under my wiper is like saying "here you throw this
away"[1].

 _[1] credit to Mitch Hedberg_

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jrockway
I have this problem where people come into the building I live in and slide
ads under my door. I just slide them back out again.

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Duff
I could live with the ONE phonebook that I would have used in the days when
you actually used phonebooks. But nowadays, I never use the phonebook (and I'm
a weirdo who still mails letters), but there seems to be like a half dozen
phonebook providers.

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ambiguity
Apparently you can opt out at: <http://yellowpagesoptout.com/> If enough
people do so then it would achieve the same thing.

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MichaelGG
No, if enough people do that, it sets a precedence that "opt out" of harmful
behaviour is acceptable. Instead, it should be opt-in.

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lotusleaf1987
While I wholeheartedly agree with conserving our natural resources, I'm pretty
sure this law is going to be overturned on the basis that it is
unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment's freedom of speech. It's
been a long time since my Constitutional Law class, but IIRC there are many
precedents, several involving Jehova's witnesses (they were a persecuted
minority at the time), passing out leaflets and flyers and having similar laws
passed and overturned.

Here's a similar situation in Texas in 2005:
[http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/federal-judge-texas-
man-...](http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/federal-judge-texas-man-may-
leaflet-in-illinois-state-building)

U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo ruled earlier this month that the law
violates the Constitution because it gives state officials too much discretion
in determining when to issue permits and prohibits religious exhibits.
Castillo also faulted the law for banning people who want to distribute
leaflets from approaching the public without providing an exception in cases
where people consent to being approached.

“The judge reaffirmed the First Amendment principles and showed that the First
Amendment rights are valued in Chicago,” said Elizabeth Murray, whose client
Kevin Cantrell filed the lawsuit in April 2004 against officials at the
Thompson Center and the state Department of Central Management Services. The
center is the state's main government building in Chicago.

“This also protects more than just religious leafletters. It protects all who
want to leaflet, so it is of great value to the citizens of Illinois,” said
Murray, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented Cantrell.

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benmccann
I don't think a law banning phone books could be considered as a ban on free
speech. A phone book is not speech. Speech is expression that communicates a
message. A phone book is a reference material and does not communicate any
message, position, or view.

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Retric
A phone book contains advertizing which does communicate a message by
definition.

