Reach Out and Touch Someone Else

Telemarketers are cursing under their breaths as the National Do Not Call Registry opens for business. The default libertarian reaction, I suppose, is to oppose this as one more form of business regulation. I'm not so sure.

On your physical property, you can slap up a sign by your gate, or on your door, that reads "no solicitation," and at least in theory (though I don't know that anyone would actually call the cops) someone who ignored it would be trespassing. The way our telephone networks are built, there's no comparable way to do the same thing on your telephone, which is no less your property. So this doesn't strike me as particularly offensive: if it's regulation, it's regulation of a bottom-up sort that allows individuals to limit access to their telephone line in the same way that they can already control access to their front yards.

So what about the fact that it's being done at the federal level? Well, the Interstate Commerce Clause is probably the most abused and misused portion of the Constitution, but this seems to at least arguably fall within its proper scope. Phone networks obviously cross state lines, a solicitation is commerce, and it seems one could make an argument that a system of 50 different lists and 50 different sets of rules would be unwieldy, conditions which suggest that the federal power "to regulate commerce between the several states" could be legitimately invoked. Thoughts?