Tired of junk faxes, California recently passed a law designed to ban marketers from sending unsolicited faxes. Unfortunately the Feds via the US Chamber of Commerce sued to block the law saying it was unfair.

Even “if you’ve been doing business with someone for years, then you have to take on some significant costs to comply with (the California) law,” said Amar Sarwal, general litigation counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit business advocacy group. “We think this will make it hard on small- and middle-size business and maybe some larger ones.”

California legislators are saying that the federal Junk Fax Prevention Act isn’t working so they were forced to take action.

State Senator Debra Bowen, a Democrat, says the federal law doesn’t go far enough to protect fax machine owners. Allowing marketers an exemption just because they say they had a prior relationship with someone is no good unless they can prove it, she asserts. “In the federal law, there is no requirement for anyone to demonstrate that a prior business relationship existed,” Bowen said. “Anyone could say, ‘I had a business dealing with someone way back when,’ and we’d have to take them at their word.”

Why oh why is our federal government so concerned with protecting business models that every citizen hates?! Wasn’t there a time when the wants of citizens came before the wants of those pushing annoying and wasteful business models?!

If it were up to me I’d ban all phone solicitations. Yeah, you heard me. It’d be illegal to call someone, anyone, and say, “Do you want to buy this?” If it’s illegal for a sales person to come onto my property and sell me crap, he shouldn’t have any right to come into my house via the phone or fax machine. And don’t even bring up the first amendment. Courts have long held that free speech does not apply to advertisers.