Call Me, Pay Fee

[Commentary] Political candidates and organizations are exempted from the National Do Not Call Registry, created by Congress in 2003. A simple, low-tech regulatory change could shift the advantage decisively back in the direction of privacy.

All telephone service providers should be required to offer every subscriber the option of accepting only “bonded” calls. To complete a call to a subscriber electing this option, the caller would have to show willingness and ability to compensate the recipient — should the latter designate the call a nuisance. Before calls to these numbers could be completed, a message would state the amount of the potential charge. A few seconds after the connection is established, the recipient would have the option of terminating the call and charging the caller by pressing a keypad button. Phone customers choosing this option could specify the amount that callers would place at risk. And they could maintain lists of favored callers, from whom calls would be accepted without risk of penalty. These might include relatives, friends, organizations from which communications are particularly welcome or parties from whom a callback has been specifically requested.

[James B. Rule is a sociologist and a scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.]