As Phone Book Cancellations Rise, Industry Sticks to Their Guns
A demonstration of the city's new opt-out program's popularity, phone book cancellations have risen to 105,000 books and 16,874 households, the PI reports from a city council briefing. 59,600 phone books were canceled in the first 12 hours alone.
Despite people's obvious aversion to having a phone book delivered to them--and a judge agreeing with them yesterday that this opt-out registry is within the public interest--the phone book industry, represented by the Local Search Association, are sticking to their guns that this violates their First Amendment rights. In a statement yesterday, Local Search Association president Neg Norton compared the government-run opt-out option to the hypothetical censorship of the entire publishing industry.
We are disappointed with the court’s decision to deny our request for a preliminary injunction. We are currently assessing our legal options and remain hopeful that the court will eventually recognize that singling out the Yellow Pages industry for discriminatory regulations and fees threatens not only our industry, but every other publisher the government decides to silence.
They also point out that they've had their own opt-out service all along, which reads somewhat like a cross between the city's opt-out service and a Yellow Pages PR landing page.
Regardless, there is an important distinction here: nobody is restricting the Yellow Pages industry from making phone books. They are restricting the industry from delivering unwanted items. If someone sent me a new, almost-identical copy of Catcher in the Rye once every few months, I'd probably want to opt-out of that, too.
