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posted by mrpg on Monday June 05 2017, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-call-is-important-to-us dept.

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Frank Kemp was working on his computer when his cellphone let out the sound of Mario — from Super Mario Bros. — collecting a coin. That signaled he had a new voice mail message, yet his phone had never rung.

"At first, I thought I was crazy," said Mr. Kemp, a video editor in Dover, Del. "When I checked my voice mail, it made me really angry. It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."

Mr. Kemp had just experienced a technology gaining traction called ringless voice mail, the latest attempt by telemarketers and debt collectors to reach the masses. The calls are quietly deposited through a back door, directly into a voice mail box — to the surprise and (presumably) irritation of the recipient, who cannot do anything to block them.

Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.

But consumer advocates, technology experts, people who have been inundated with these calls and the lawyers representing them say such an exemption would open the floodgates. Consumers' voice mail boxes would be clogged with automated messages, they say, making it challenging to unearth important calls, whether they are from an elderly mother's nursing home or a child's school.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by Snow on Monday June 05 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)

    by Snow (1601) on Monday June 05 2017, @03:56PM (#520808) Journal

    people who cut up their own sons' sexual organs to please the creator

    I quite like my clipped dick. I think it looks better than unclipped. It's smegma free all the time (I didn't even know that was a thing until recently). I'm not religious at all.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05 2017, @04:13PM (#520819)

    Either you face hard truths about what was done to you, or you make up a good story that implies you got the better end of the stick.

    It's the human way.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday June 06 2017, @02:08AM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday June 06 2017, @02:08AM (#521110)

    Good for you, but mutilating other people's genitals based on personal preferences, religious beliefs, or generally for any reason other than to solve an imminent medical emergency is a violation of their fundamental right to control their own body; it should be illegal unless you have the person's consent. Even if you assume that those studies showing that MGM has some benefits (less smegma, somewhat reduced chance of HIV, etc.) are accurate, that still doesn't justify nonconsensual genital mutilation, especially since the problems can almost always be solved in other ways and depend on the individual's behavior. It's completely absurd that this barbaric practice of mutilating other people's genitals still exists in the 21st century, and in supposedly civilized countries no less.