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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!telecom-request
- Date: Fri, 25 Dec 92 03:40:23 -0800
- From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes)
- Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
- Subject: Sad to Say, Telemarketing Works
- Message-ID: <telecom12.916.4@eecs.nwu.edu>
- Organization: TELECOM Digest
- Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
- X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 916, Message 4 of 11
- Lines: 24
-
- There was a piece in Monday's paper saying a federal judge in Oregon
- has temporarily suspended enforcement of a new law banning recorded
- telephone sales pitches. Katherine Moser, manager of a small business
- in Keizer OR complains that the law discriminates against small
- businesses by prohibiting inexpensive recorded telephone soliciting
- machines, but continues to allow live sales pitches that big companies
- can afford.
-
- "In an affidavit, she said no other form of advertising brought her as
- much business as the recorded sales pitch that reached customers
- through an auto-dialer she purchased for $1,795."
-
- First, lets hope the judge recognizes this as a tragedy-of-the-commons
- situation. [reference to Garret Hardin's highly influential essay "The
- Tragedy of the Commons" in which he shows how an act which is
- insignificant when performed by one person becomes devastating to the
- community when everybody does it] Second, the fact that people
- actually respond to her sales pitch is, well, sickening. Maybe
- instead of crusading for a national list of people who don't want to
- receive telephone solicitations, we should crusade for a list of those
- who do want them, and permit only the people on that list to be
- called.
-
-