Bill Esler

Direct Mail Opt Out
April 30, 2007

To The Editor:

I read one of your articles about direct mail strategies…and thought your readership should be sensitive to the current climate in legislatures in at least 12 states…that since many direct mail advertisers ignore homeowners preferences and send them mail anyway, the laws/courts are being solicited as a remedy.

The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider.

Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.

To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”

We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.

The opinion cited above is from the majority. The case involved David Rowan receiving a solicitation for a political contribution. Since he could find no other law or regulation that would allow him to bar the sender from sending repeat mailings, he filed a Form 1500 with the USPS.

Form 1500 blocks senders for 5 years from sending anything to the applicant. Since the law supporting Form 1500 was originally intended to allow homeowners to block pandering and sexually oriented mail, the case went to the US Supreme Court. The Court ruled that Form 1500 can be used to block ANY unwanted mail since it is up solely up to the recipient to determine whether the mailing he received is pandering and/or sexually oriented.

Proposed recent “Do not mail” laws is are Opt-Out laws. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?

I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!

Ramsey A Fahel

Posted by Bill Esler on April 30, 2007 | Comments (0)