CURRAN: No domo arigato Mr. Roboto, automatic calls to my home are not your free speech

By KELLEY CURRAN
Local Columnist

June 30, 2008 01:27 pm

— “Hi, this is recorded, overly peppy out-of-town whoever, with the Joe Jack Politician campaign. I just wanted to remind you to get out and vote this Tuesday because we can't survive two more years of representation by that dog-abusing, baby-hating crack head currently in office. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your dinner, movie, peace and quiet or whatever else you had going on before I called to annoy you.”
There’s no way someone has a constitutional right to call my house and inform me how awesome one guy is or how lowly is the other. It's my house, my phone, my time.
Yet two out-of-state groups which employ automatic, recorded, or “robo” calls to deliver messages about political candidates, specifically the two major-party candidates in Indiana's 9th Congressional District, Mike Sodrel and Baron Hill, recently argued before the Indiana Supreme Court that Indiana's law against robo calls don't prohibit their groups from making them. If it does, they claim it is an unconstitutional limit on their free speech rights.
I am totally in favor of free speech. Putting it right up there at the very front of the Bill of Rights leads me to believe they're a very important, virtually absolute right. Further, there is rarely a case in which anyone's right to free speech actually violates anyone else's rights or compels them to do anything they do not want to do.
These calls are a different deal entirely.
I bought the property the phone is located on. Bought the phone. Pay for the service. Someone at this property likely paid for the original phone line. There is a router, phone jacks another equipment we also pay for. How can anyone besides me or mine have an actual right to any of that?
The groups currently being sued by our state claim they have a right to get their message to us because it's political. They're using the alarmist, slippery slope strategy by claiming if the Indiana Supreme Court accepts the state's argument, it could lead to a ban on political ads in other media such as TV, constraining political speech.
Ads delivered by radio or television are a different thing. You know when buying a radio or television that you don't have direct control over what may be aired, but there are some areas of control such as changing the channel, muting or using various methods to filter or record what you actually watch. It is assumed someone else is going to create content you will passively experience, or not.
That's not what you buy a telephone for or how you intend for it to be used. It is intended that people you actually want to call you can convey important information, even if idle gossip is the information important to you, and you can call out to communicate and convey information.
I would be very interested in meeting the person who purchases a phone and all necessary services with the hope of receiving a recording of someone they've never met telling them about something they could not care less about for the sake of getting someone elected. Someone needs to spend some time with them.
In this case, we're not even talking about an actual person, that is, no one is trying to stop anyone from putting real people up to calling and annoying you. It is only the robo calls that are at issue. I guess at least if it's a person on the line, you have the option of using the phone for one of the primary reasons you bought it, to be able to actually speak to whoever is on the other end and have a reasonable expectation they will hear and understand you. Shouting expletives or giving a calm explanation as to why you wouldn't vote for their candidate if your mother called and asked you to — at a recording — gives little satisfaction.
The Internet is similar to the phone. We expect to have some control over how we communicate. If we are being taken to a site we don't want to go to or are receiving emails that may do harm to our computer, if our equipment and service are being appropriated by someone else, there are laws, policies and technological strategies to deal with it.
One area I've always thought was a little gray when it comes to unsolicited messages applies to email and also to regular mail and the phone. There is that aspect which sort of forces me to do something. I don't have to read a piece of mail, open an email or listen to the message on the phone, but for practical reasons, I must dispose of the junk mail, delete the message, answer then hang up the phone.
These laws are a rare example of democracy working. We've gotten together to protect our rights by conveying our wishes to officials who actually listened, well, except some of the ones running for office.
By the way, though there are few things you can fix with a law, I barely mentioned the specific content of the so-called “messages” of the candidates. I think if any of my children had went to school and called classmates half the things these men have called each other over the years, I'd have been getting a phone call.
Jeffersonville resident Kelley Curran invites readers to e-mail her at kelinawriterhat@aol.com. But be warned: if you call her names, she'll hire a robo-calling system to phone your mother.

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