This is quite annoying news. From the Globe and Mail:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ruled yesterday that it will not ban so-called junk voice mail because it has not been enough of a nuisance or inconvenience.

If you don't have a voice mail system built into your home phone line, you haven't experienced this problem. What happens is that you pick up your phone and hear a beeping dialtone that tells you that you have a voice mail message. So, you dial in to check your messages. Instead of hearing one of your friends or family, you hear some moron in a recorded message telling you that he will fix your roof or whatever.

Personally, I find it very annoying and it makes me angrier than e-mail spam. The only good thing I can say is that it is fairly rare so far. All the more reason to ban it now, I say, before the voice-mail spammers build up a big industry.

How clueless can the CRTC be?

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