The fight over phone books

A federal appeals court panel has rejected Seattle’s fees and restrictions on delivery of yellow pages phone books to local residents.

A spokesman says the City Attorney has not decided if the city will appeal the decision.

The city adopted the rules in 2010, saying that the delivery of the phone books to residents who didn’t want them generated 1,300 tons of waste a year and cost the city nearly $200,000 to dispose of.

Dex Media and other yellow-pages companies sued and lost the case in U.S. District Court in Seattle. But the panel of the 9th circuit court of appeals found the restrictions unconstitutional, declaring the yellow pages books are entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.

The city has a separate opt-out site funded by fees paid by the Yellow Pages organizations. The national search association has always had an-industry funded website.

“We’ve been doing a lot of the right things for a long time now and we’ve got a site up that works really well, completely paid for by the industry. It’s an elegant solution that works for everybody,” explains Neg Norton, Local Search Association President. “My sense is that this industry solution that has been very effective will continue on in the city of Seattle.”

Norton says the compromise would be to let people who want the books to keep getting them and make the people who don’t use a website to opt-out.

Host Luke Burbank says the company should come over and haul them away if you don’t want them.

Jethro from Gatewood, West Seattle writes to Dave and Luke:

I enjoyed your commentary on the phone book-dumping debacle. One of the many hijinks my high school posse got up to in our hometown was driving around town picking up items from alleys and unofficial dumps and relocating them to the yards of various residents. Old diving boards, washing machines, park benches.. Of course, this was way back in the 90s and we were young. But I always thought we were on the forefront of free speech. I now see that our crimes were actually performance art and am glad to know they would be protected as free speech.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.