White Pages fading out? [telecom]

It's about time. They all need to make available on-line the except copy of the paper book, which AT&T has already done for most of their LEC territory.

It should be 100% for all LECs.

The RBOCs' white pages are all online.

Verizon

There's quite a lot of overlap, since white pages listings are not subject to copyright in the US.

Canada

That's a joint site by all 11 of the Canadian ILECs.

R's, John

A few months back, I posted a review of quality of various on line listing databases, as I was dismayed that the quality was getting poorer, not better. The problem is that the field has been taken over by the data consolidators, big time, where there's a financial incentive never to drop bad listings and out of date information. Even if you can get them to drop a bad listing, it reappears with their next purchase of the list from another data consolidator, till the idea of a source for the listing becomes moot.

Verizon's directory publishing arm keeps getting spun off. It's changed its name a number of times. Recently it became SuperMedia, formerly Idearc Media, formerly GTE Publishing. SuperMedia is FairPoint's official directory publisher right now, but who knows how long that agreement will last.

But superpages.com/ itself is somewhat reliable only for business listings in Verizon territory and dreadful outside of Verizon territory. No idea of its accuracy in FairPoint territory.

It's people search feature IS NOT the Verizon residential telephone subscribers with listed telephone numbers, just another front end to whitepages.com, one of the information consolidators.

Verizon is the odd-man out without a look-and-feel director Web site.

No longer exists. Years ago, it was the official site of listed residential telephone subscribers. It's now a front end to Intellius, a rather inaccurate information consolidator, which attempts to sell cheapo credit checks and skip tracing services to businesses. However, it does continue to honor Anywho opt outs, which does nothing to remove the information from being accessed via another Intelius front end.

AT&T has a look-and-feel Web site for directories AT&T Publishing publishes.

Where AT&T has a listing services agreement with R.H. Donnelley, use R.H. Donnelley is the official printed phone directory for certain phone companies, including part of AT&T territory and all of Qwest territory, but an alternative telephone directory in other parts of the country. So listing quality varies with regard to its receipt of official subscriber lists from telephone companies.

Nope, just a front end to whitepages.com and not Qwest's listings. Use R.H. Donnelley's Web site.

.

I have a Verizon phone line at home.

me several times at current and previous addresses. Most listings say the phone number is not available. One listing does show a phone number, but it is wrong.

If Verizon is going to get rid of paper white pages and tell people to use this web site, it needs some work.

But, do we need to look up personal phone numbers anymore? Cellular phones seem to be working out well with every number being "unlisted."

Harold

I tried some of those for my family. I found:

--A phone number out of service for at least 6 years is shown on the "optional search" page.

--A person deceased for 6 years is shown on the "optional search" page.

--A person was listed in the wrong city with an old number.

--The location of an exchange was shown on a map some 20 miles away from its actual location.

The White Pages books I have have copyright notices are on them. One has a copyright on every page.

Idearc filed for bankruptcy.

Verizon is lousy. I tried looking up a pizza place and I got responses for places 150 miles away. Sorry, but nobody's pizza is that good to justify that kind of drive.

The other points in Mr. Kerman's post well excellent. Thanks for the description of the operations.

Hey, I've got you one better. Over a quarter century ago I had a business line. I converted it to a residential line (yea, like 28 years ago), yet I still get calls on a monthly basis asking for the "the person responsible for xxxxxxx in your company...". Old phone numbers never go away, particularly on the internet.

ET

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net ---

Years ago when cellular was new; GTE Mobile Net had the wild idea to print a directory of its subscribers, that went over like a big bomb.

There is something seriously flawed about the algorithm that a lot of these sites use for calculating distance. What if you know the actual name of the community the business is located in? You cannot get that result. It's always changed to surrounding territory.

Of course, this is because they are churning their statistics and not trying to provide useful information to the user.

John Levine is speaking of a decades old US Supreme Court ruling, whose name escapes me right now. Cannot copyright an alphabetical list of names of residences or businesses. Categorized listings, however, are copyrightable, because assigning subject heading classifications is actual creative work.

I've seen those copyright notices too. I have no idea what they are pulling.

The case involved a rural telephone company that served Gove, Kansas, and some other counties in north central Kansas which successfully prevailed in a suit against it for using allegedly copyrighted listings published by one of the major companies, either GTE or Southwestern Bell, if I remember correctly. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Anybody can _claim_ whatever they want, and that claim, _in_and_of_ itself, means _nothing_, legally.

The fact remains that the U.S. Supreme Court =settled= the issue in "Feist V. Rural Telephone", 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

Raw 'information' is _not_ copyrightable; but "compilations" are.

The SupCt held that the ordering of the data by a 'natural' scheme, such as 'alphabetical' order did *NOT* meet the creativity standard required for copyright to attach.

I remember years ago hearing that the telephone companies put names addresses and phone numbers in the books to find out if someone was using them for commercial purposes, then would bring legal action against the person or company who used it.

When does 'raw information' become a "compilation"?

Telephone directories not only list names, but also addresses and phone numbers. Phone numbers are assigned by the telephone company, historically phone numbers were proprietary belonging to and under the control of the phone company. (I don't think number portability existed when the Feist case was initially filed).

Never.

In a compilation of facts _only_ the creative effort in making -that- compilation *ITSELF* is protected by copyright. The underlying information contained in the compilation is -not- so protected.

Queens White pages:

March 2008 res and bus total pages = 1204

2009-2010 res = 969 bus = 219 Total = 1188

2010-2011 Res = 931 Bus = 218 Total = 1149

***** Moderator's Note *****

That's only 3.9% difference in residential listsings, which doesn't seem like a major shift. It could be explained by other factors.

Bill Horne Moderator

Incorrect on the last detail. it was two small/rurlal phone companies. The case is "Feist v Rural Telephone".

I'd like to suggest using the U.S. Census Bureau as the source for white pages information. By law, personal information (which would include name and telephone number) won't be released for 72 years, but that's not much worse than the other sources available. It's only updated every 10 years. But they do get rid of old data, or rather gather it from scratch every 10 years.