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CURB TELE-JUNK

You're finally home from work, you've just sat down to dinner and the phone rings. What now? A disembodied voice that reminds you faintly of the paranoid computer HAL in "2000" wants to sell you something. And whether you want to buy or not-even if you hang up-the voice's taped sales spiel will tie up your phone until its course.

Junk mail is bad enough, but at least it doesn't keep you from getting the mail you want. But what can you do about endless junk phone solicitations- dialed automatically, to one number after another, without human intervention? Or about the plague of junk fax?

With some help from Congress, currently considering several bills to regulate telemarketing, you could do quite a lot.

At the least, as Sen. Ernest Holling (D-S.C) proposes, Congress should require an automatically dialed call to disconnect within five seconds after the targeted number hangs up, leaving the line free for emergency calls.

Unsolicited advertising by fax should be banned, as it would be under a bill offered by Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.). Why should you provide paper and electricity for this?

Telemarketers should be required to compile a "don't-call" list of people who don't want to be bothered. If that fails, a national "don't-call" database may be necessary.

HAL, you'll recall, seized control from humans for a time. These bills would wrest *S18320 it from machines and put it in human hands.