As a super for my building, I have dealt with unwanted circulars for years, and I'm sick of it. Every Wednesday when I come home from work there are piles of circulars on the stoop. They are always a half dozen plastic bags of dozens of various circulars, and nobody in my building wants them, so immediately they get tossed. It's a waste of paper and energy, plus the advertisers are wasting their money on an ineffective means of promoting their businesses.

But I do have one concern about addressing this problem in the same way as the do-not-call list. As someone, like many of you, who have had to canvass neighborhoods for candidates, it would make it harder for us to distribute literature. Although I know that campaign literature can get out of hand, I don't want to see more restrictions on campaigning. These advertisers are ruining it for all of us.

A single flyer under the door is not a big deal. A bag full of papers dumped on the stoop is a problem. I think a better solution would be an outright ban on dumping entire bags of this stuff.

Look up Intro 196 from 2006 on the City Council website (www.nyccouncil.info), and you'll find Tony Avella's bill, introduced over a year ago, to create a "do not circulate" database. Of course, since Tony Avella introduced it, the bill went nowhere.

Now, Felder has improved on Avella's bill, but let's give credit to the originator of the idea.

Oh yeah, one more thing -- Felder's bill was introduced last September, and went nowhere until he held a press conference.

Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.

The proposed recent "Do not mail" is an Opt-Out law. 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!

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.

http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html

Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel

I'm as big an advocate of free speech as anyone, but no Founding Father had Rite-Aid circulars in mind when the Constitution was drafted. These things are an environmental disaster, made worse by the fact that we always receive them in triplicate at our one-family house. The Mayor should have included some provision for dealing with this mound of pollutants in his 2030 plan.