The Will of the People vs. The US Constitution
How interesting! The national do not call list has been blocked by TWO federal courts, and the people are mad as hell.
What we have is a situation where the will of the people and the mandates of the US Constitution cannot work in tandem. The fault here? A stupidly written bill that differentiates between different kinds of legitimate speech. The second judge putting the screws to the list cited the First Amendment, noting that it is unconstitutional for a law to make such a distinction. Therefore, the bill is no good.
Well fair enough. But fifty million people-- that's a LOT-- clearly want this bill passed pretty damn badly. Why can't they just rewrite the legislation to take out the distinction between telemarketers and charities/political entities, and ban all unsolicited calls?
Ohhhh... right... because they're politicians.
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The way they banned
The way they banned unsolicited fax solicitation was on the basis that the solicitor was incurring costs on the recipient - fax paper, etc. A similar argument could be made for email spam - network resources, etc; and for cell phones, which charge on usage regardless of whether the call is inbound or out.
It might seem thin, but if you went the same way with phones, it wouldn't become a first amendment issue at all, even if it might be harder to establish.