The Seattle Times:
Seattle can’t limit distribution of yellow-pages phone books with an opt-out registry, and it can’t charge a fee to publishers who want to leave commercial directories on your porch, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
The court ruled the city’s law is unconstitutional, saying yellow pages are protected, like other publications, by the First Amendment.
Even though more than 79,000 people wanted to opt out, Seattle, like a lot of places, can’t seem to stop the flood of various yellow pages-type directories that show up on our doors. I don’t know of anyone who likes them or anyone who uses them enough to justify not being allowed to opt out of having them tossed on our doorsteps.
Update: The Yellow Pages has its own national opt-out program.
Thankfully we have recycling. Whenever we get one I take it out of the plastic bag and put it in the recycling bin.
Recycling definitely helps … mine goes straight to the recycle bin as well (either that or I compost them in my worm bins). However, not using in the first place is far better than recycling. I would love to be able to opt out.
Next step: start citing them for littering.
Just signed up with Catalog Choice (which I got from the comments in the Seattle Times article) – they stop companies from sending you junk mail for free https://www.catalogchoice.org/
They’re legit and have been reviewed by the NY Times, Wall St. Journal etc
The thing that I don’t understand, who pays good money to advertise on a medium that only 1 or 2% of people use. It’s like spam in a way. Unsolicited, expensive and useless. I have not used a Yellow Pages type book in years. Recycling bin for the past 8 years, at least.
Toss them back right in front of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At least 79.000 yellow bricks at their doorstep should get the message across.
First step is stopping all companies but one from printing “yellow pages” for a region.
Much worse than 1 useless yellow pages is 3 useless yellow pages with different sub-sets of ads in them.
I like them, They are a major money maker for our publications and support the newspapers we put out.
Well, that would be considered littering. We’d be fined.
My business is constantly accosted by yellow pages salespeople. I send them all packing. I’ve barely used the “real” yellow pages in the past few years but I still advertise there because there are a lot of retirees in our community. I’m sure no one under 40 uses the phone book.
For better or worse, trying to stop a company from publishing a directory is just as much a violation of the First Amendment as what Seattle tried to do.