Put . . . the . . . phone . . . down

There’s no need to call Judge Edward Nottingham in Denver to vent your outrage over his ruling last week granting telemarketers a reprieve from the federal government’s wildly popular do-not-call list. (Although, if someone has his honor’s home phone number, it might be fun to yank his chain, oh, say during dinnertime.)

There’s no need to call Judge Edward Nottingham in Denver to vent your outrage over his ruling last week granting telemarketers a reprieve from the federal government’s wildly popular do-not-call list. (Although, if someone has his honor’s home phone number, it might be fun to yank his chain, oh, say during dinnertime.)

There’s no need to call your Washington lawmakers, either, even though phones in congressional offices were no doubt ringing non-stop during all of last week’s legislative and legal maneuvering. Congress is speaking with one voice on this issue, and for once it’s the same as yours.

And complaining to the Direct Marketing Association, which has helped carry the telemarketing industry’s leaky bucket into sympathetic courtrooms, isn’t worth the wear and tear on your dialing digit.

The reason you don’t need to run up your long-distance bill – or your blood pressure – is that this, too, shall pass, although probably not before scotching Wednesday’s scheduled implementation of the do-not-call regulations. We’re talking about a mere hiccup here, a minor detour.

Why the confidence?

Well, it isn’t every day that the Senate votes 95-0 and the House weighs in at 412-8 in support of legislation that didn’t even exist when lawmakers awoke that morning. But that’s what happened last Wednesday after an earlier court decision held that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lacked proper congressional authority to initiate the do-not-call list.

“Here’s your stinkin’ authority,” lawmakers fairly sneered.

As for Judge Nottingham, he simply and obviously erred. In essence, he argued that The FTC is proscribed by the First Amendment from curtailing the activities of commercial telemarketers, while at the same time leaving political and religious telemarketers free to dial at will.

But there’s nothing novel about government drawing such distinctions, as political and religious speech have historically – and with good reason – enjoyed a greater degree of First Amendment protection than does commercial speech.

That’s why you can stick a sign in your front lawn touting your favorite political candidate but can’t erect a commercial billboard there. It’s why religious pamphleteers have an easier time in airports and malls than do hawkers for merchants.

In short, the law is chock full of cases – long-established and widely accepted – in which the government treats commercial speech differently than it does political and religious speech.

Nottingham’s decision hasn’t got a prayer of surviving appeal.

What e-mail ban?

Speaking of this, too, passing: Much ado was made last week about the purported banishment of e-mail from the premises of British company Phones 4U.

Turns out there was much less to the story than you might have gleaned from press snippets. The headlines and broadcast versions made it seem as though the company’s CEO had simply up and scrapped e-mail altogether. . . . Not so.

Not only did the so-called “ban” cover only internal employee-to-employee e-mail, it failed to account for the fact that the company in question conducts a slew of internal processes via e-mail that weren’t likely to be conducted any other way any time soon.

None of which stopped e-mail vendors from jumping on the story. One offered me a briefing “to discuss how companies can avoid having to take such drastic measures like getting rid of e-mail completely.”

Buzz will save you the time of such a consultation. If you are contemplating the drastic step of getting rid of e-mail completely, here’s all you need know:

It’s long past time to find a new career.

Ours still works. The address is buzz@nww.com.