The yellow pages industry yesterday filed a motion (.pdf) in U.S. District Court to overturn Seattle’s phone book ordinance, which prohibits them from distributing yellow pages to those on a city-enforced opt-out list.
The motion for summary judgment is the next step in the lawsuit filed by yellow pages publishers last November, reaffirming their commitment to defeat the city’s ordinance, which they claim is unconstitutional and unfairly targets them. Basically, they have no desire to back the fuck down.
Council Member Mike O’Brien, who sponsored the legislation, is out of town and couldn’t be reached for comment immediately. But his office told The Stranger that the city will file a response to the motion in the next few weeks. In the meantime, the city continues to implement the ordinance. Seattle Public Utilities is currently reviewing proposals from vendors to build the opt-out system and hopes to have it up and running by late spring 2011.
Seattle’s phone book legislation bans the distribution of yellow pages without a license and charges phone book publishers a fee for every phone book they distribute in the city to recover the cost of recycling them and pay for the opt-out system. Stuff the Seattle City Council thought would teach yellow pages publishers a lesson for ignoring people’s requests to stop delivering these tomes at their doorsteps. Plus, no one really uses phone books anymore.
But the yellow pages industry cried foul. They argued that their speech is protected under the First Amendment. “The ordinance is going against the rights of the Yellow Pages Association,” said Maggie Stonecipher of Dex One, the biggest phone book publisher in Seattle. “It’s a violation of commercial and free speech. the First Amendment prohibits the government from favoring some publications over others.”
Stonecipher adds that the YPA “fundamentally agrees with what the city is doing” (i.e. reducing junk) but it doesn’t agree with the way they are going about it. YPA wants the city to abandon their opt-out website and instead go for YPA’s national opt-out site which will be launched Feb. 1. This new site will let the public opt out of whatever yellow pages they don’t won’t.
Oh. I thought this might be the Greenpeace lawsuit against the US for killing polar bears due to oil drilling practices.
Seriously, does anyone use those for anything? I maybe keep the fridge magnet for an emergency plumber, but most times never even open it.
Fucking yellow pages. It’s harassment.
The other week, somebody rang my apartment buzzer mid day. I answered and it was the yellow page guy, who wanted to be let in the building to litter yellow pages.
I told him we didn’t want them and no one in the building used them. He left them outside our front door anyway.
What is your basis for saying “no one really uses yellow pages anymore”? Is it because you are young and technologically immersed? My mother uses the yellow pages; she doesn’t have a computer or any online device. I’m not sure what the digital penetration of Seattle is, but it’s probably only around 70% or so amongst the general population, even if it’s 100% amongst the people you know. The people you know are not representative.
I’m not siding with the yellow pages. I’m just pointing out that The Stranger’s coverage treats a couple of hundred thousand people here as if they didn’t exist.
I DO NOT WANT a phone book.
Last year at about this time I contacted all of the phone book distributors and told them that. They said I would be removed from their delivery lists.
This week a phone book was delivered to my door.
Does anyone know the address of the local distribution site is? I would like to take my phone book back and give it to them.
@3: fuck, I still use the yellow pages. Not regularly, but at least a couple of times a year.
I’m also not siding with the companies that make and distribute them and think everyone should be allowed to opt out, but for certain types of businesses, using the yellow pages is both faster and more efficient than the web. I would continue to opt in for now.
Lot’s of blue collar trades do not have much of a web presence and if you want to do good comparison shopping, the layout and sorting provided by the old school books is far superior.
I just talked to Mike O’Brien’s office and they gave me the name and phone number for the distributor of this particular phone book — Super Media. The woman I talked to at O’Brien’s office was very helpful and took down my info.
I then contacted the number for Super Media and spoke with the district manager.
He is having someone come out and pick up the phone books.
Also, he said I would be placed on their opt out list. Hopefully it works this time.
O’Brien’s office number is 684-8800.
Give them a call if you get a phone book that you do not want.
If they want to play hard ball, maybe the city should change the law from “opt out” to “opt in”.
There is no first amendment case. The phone book publisher has no first amendment protections on private property, and once a property owner/lessee has told them to stop it must stop. Whether the city runs the opt-out list or a letter is written or whatever, DOES NOT MATTER. Nobody is forced to use the preferred method of the advertiser when choosing to opt-out.
Is this really how they wish to spend their last $500 dollars?
Whoops, double $s.
some legal expert explain how this is about free speech and not about fucking dropping garbage on my property? its a form of littering.
Generaly speaking, we want groups and people to have the freedom to distribute stuff door to door. How do you stop just one group fairly?
@12 by requiring groups by law to come back and pick up any materials they’ve dropped off that the receiver doesn’t want, or to reimburse someone for the cost of returning them. You want to leave phonebooks/flyers/advertisements on my porch? That’s fine, but if I don’t want them you come back and pick them up the city fines you a substantial amount. Or leave them with the postage paid for them to be mailed back.
@12, Yeah, the problem here isn’t blocking ANYONE from delivering pizza coupons or political materials or even biblical quotations to your door.
The problem is when we say we don’t want them, and they’re left anyway; when we call a phone number to be added to a list, and they’re left anyway; and when we go online to their opt-out page, and they’re left anyway.
What they refuse to admit is that the only way their business model works is if they print up a certain amount of books and deliver them.
@13 & @14
Hey, I agree with you both in theory… But in practice, @13, then you could stymie a political campaign by requesting all the material be picked up (even it it wasn’t delivered), or @14, how do you write the law so that it doesn’t target one group? Would there would have to be a pizza delivery opt-out list, too? How – in both cases, do you deal with apartment buildings? It may just be a little tricky in this case to get the ends desired without collateral damage.