Libertarians ridicule New York City's "phone etiquette" proposal

WASHINGTON, DC -- New York City politicians are considering the nation's first proposal to outlaw cell phone calls during movies, concerts and Broadway plays – but Libertarians say social pressure would be a better way to deter such rude behavior.

"Picture Miss Manners with a gun, and you have some idea why this proposal is an overreaction," said George Getz, Libertarian Party communications director. "Civilized people can deal with minor annoyances without further empowering the Nanny State."

This month the New York City Council is expected to consider a bill that would impose a $50 fine on anyone who makes or receives a call, or fails to turn off the phone's ringer, during an indoor
performance at a theater, art gallery, concert hall or library.

If passed in New York, the "cell phone etiquette" law could spread rapidly to other states, industry observers predict. Last year, after New York became the first state to ban using a cell phone while driving, 31 other state legislatures considered similar regulations.

But the real question raised by the New York proposal, Libertarians say, is: "Should bad manners be illegal?"

"There are plenty of other ways to deter someone who's gabbing on a cell phone during a movie, starting with giving them a dirty look, tapping them on the shoulder and asking them to stop, or even asking the manager to do so," Getz said. "When it comes to making people behave, social disapproval works much more efficiently than writing another law."

Besides, enforcing such a measure could pose more problems than the "crime" itself, Libertarians say.

"Imagine every movie theater equipped with cell phone cops who bolt down the aisle every time a ringer goes off, demand a drivers license from the offender, and issue a ticket," Getz said.

"With an army of phone fighters disturbing the peace, patrons will soon long for the days when an occasional cell phone ring was their greatest annoyance.

“Besides, if politicians are going to target people who talk on a cell phone during a movie or play, what about obnoxious people who talk aloud and aren't using a cell phone? Or people who butt in line to buy tickets; take too long to decide what kind of popcorn to buy; or teen-agers who smooch in the back row of the theater?

"Once you put politicians in charge of defining rude behavior, expect the list of annoying behaviors to grow.”

That's why the best way to ensure cell-phone etiquette is to put private individuals and businesses in charge, Libertarians say.

"Many private businesses already prohibit customers from eating, drinking, using foul language and other rude behaviors, so they can simply add using a cell phone to the list if they desire," he said.

"In fact, simply encouraging every business to implement its own policy might solve the problem instantly. People who find cell phones annoying could patronize cell-phone free theaters, stores,
and restaurants. Meanwhile, people who insist on yakking loudly on their phones would get exactly what they deserve: the company of other people just as obnoxious as they are.

"There's no reason to hire more cops to impose cell phone etiquette. Let's urge New Yorkers to disconnect this ridiculous proposal before it spreads to other states."

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Apparently Bombardier is/has developed a method of applying thin coatings of some type of metal to train windows to prevent the use of cellular phones on them.

As for scambling signals in your auditoriums... the Fire Department might be a little upset when it can't page its volunteer fire fighters while they're at the show.

Management should be free to take action in restaurants, movie theaters and other places where cellphone use is a very rude disruption. For movie theaters, if someone's cellphone rings in the auditorium they should be removed from the theater. The only way phones should be tolerated at all is if they are in silent "vibrate" mode.

Some of the heat has to be applied to the cellphone companies themselves, those cheap-ass bastards. Yeah, that's right. They are cheap-ass.

Most cellphones do not come equipped with a silent vibrate mode. You have to spend more money for that add-on --and that's only if the cellphone model you have even supports it. Hell, most any pager has vibrate alert as a standard feature. It is totally backwards for cellphone companies not to put it in ALL cellphones.

All cellphones should come with handsfree talking sets. And something has to be done about making dialing numbers easy. One problem is the penchant for cellphone companies to make newer phones smaller and smaller. You have to have the fingers of a squirrel to hit the numbers on some of those keypads. And trying to dial numbers while driving is a very risky thing.

Personally I haven't been too bothered by cell phone interruptions. I find that most people do take care and go outside when talking on their cell phone. Every now and then there is someone in the bookshop yakking on his or her cell phone in a loud voice. I just glare and they move away from me.

1. If you must have your cell phone on in a restaurant, when it rings, leave the table and take the call in the lobby.

2. If you much have your cell phone on while riding on a train; take you call at the end of the carriage. (This is suggested on all of the English trains.)

3. If you must have your cell phone on in a book shop; ask the caller to wait a moment while you step outside.

4. If you must have your cell phone on in a movie theatre, put it on silent. When you receive a call, step outside and call them back.

5. Cell phones should be off in movie theatres, Film Festivals, plays, operas and ballets.

6. If you must be in touch, buy a phone that vibrates. Take your calls outside.

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Similarly, the law prohibits blasting radios in public, and drivers turn down the volume when a police car passes, though unfortunately
they don't fear social ostracism from within their cocoon/vehicles when the officer is out of sight.

Knowing of a cell-phone law may cause offenders to recognize the need for courtesy. But if there are other more effective ways of mustering social compliance, I'd like to know what they might be.

I'm sure some do this, but it's also probably not realistic to try to do it in any consistent fashion; it's not as if there's someone in every house watching for such violators (capital-V Violators?), and it's like finding a needle in a haystack. So perhaps giving the rest of the audience some incentive to turn in those people is a good idea?

What would really be optimal would be a technological solution. Not jamming, but if a signal could be sent to cell phones to indicate "don't ring audibly if you can receive this signal." But it's probably not practical with today's technology. 4 different cell phone modulation/frequency pairs in common use in the US, and even if one of them had a way to indicate this (do any?), you'd need to support them all. Or I suppose you could add another frequency that all phones should listen to, regardless of whether they are GSM, CDMA1900, etc., but I doubt the manufacturers would go for that, since it means adding more hardware. On the gripping hand, perhaps you could do something with "high" power (1W?) output in the 2.4 GHz bluetooth band, since most new phones now support bluetooth (right?). Presumably such a thing would be a perversion of bluetooth and would effectively be a bluetooth jamming device in a theatre (too bad for the people who have bluetooth microphone/headsets for their phones...), due to the power, but at least it would be a common way to signal all the phones "don't ring here!".

Without such an additional receiver, you'd probably be stuck deploying n cells within the theatre (one for each technology...), and trying to set things up such that all phones within the theatre fall in one of the special cells that transmits the "don't ring" signal.

Maybe it's not so grim as that, though. I suppose you could envision a receiver that sits in the theatre and keeps track of all cell phones that it can hear (presumably carefully deployed such that it only has good coverage within the theatre), and then has a communications channel (landline, IP, etc.) to the cell phone providers and tells them "don't let this phone ring as long as I tell you it's still in this area," and then that information gets uploaded to the cell site the phone is associated with and it either sets a "don't ring audibly" bit, or simply doesn't accept incoming calls destined to the phone.

Oomph. pipe dream.

As somewhat of an aside, I don't believe that the FCC bans cell phone jamming as long as they are sufficiently narrow in scope (e.g. a private property owner can ensure that emissions from his jammer are -60dBm beyond the borders of his property, etc.).

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Of course this should be implemented into the policy trailer: "if your cellular phone rings during the movie, you must immediately take the call outside of the auditorium or you will be evicted without a refund from the theater complex."

The funniest part would be all the staff complaining. Know how *most* theaters the staff complains "no I want to work box" or "I don't want to work the stand tonight" and such? At first everyone would be hollering to "watch the movie", but soon...very, very soon they would be complaining "no, please no, not that stupid movie again!"

But with that proviso, sure, what you say would be reasonable.

Another way to make this work would be to get a device that passively monitors what cell phones are nearby (should be easy enough), and then actually calls them (during the trailers) with a message of "This is testing to see if your cell phone is actually on during the movie. If your phone rings audibly, you will be ejected." It could call just a small sample of the total set of phones to get the point across.

Then, an usher can activate the device and go into the room and eject all the patron whose phones answer. It would also serve to gently remind patrons that their phones are on if they forgot to turn them off, and to show that the theatre is actually cracking down.

--jhawk

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