I realize one irony that

I realize one irony that I left out of yesterday’s unironic post: The FTC is using the Internet, the mass medium of choice for pornographers, hucksters, and political activists alike (and, oddly, these groups don’t belong together in any other communication medium), to fundamentally regulate telephone marketers. Of course, there’s a half-operational and half-marketed telephone system (the number is 1-888-382-1222) that allows consumers to opt out of telephone marketing systems. But it’s the Net that took in 10 million individual opt-outs during the first week of the the Do Not Call Registry’s existence. It would be interesting if the FTC ended up using a different medium (e.g., cellphones?) to allow consumers to opt out of email spam.