I like your idea. I think there are various products available that purport to do what you describe, although they seem to have not caught on yet. There is definitely a neeed for a more user friendly screen agent or whitelist type of mechanism.

I think you idea is nice in that is could be built into the phone, say hit a button when the person calls and have it always go to Voicemail in the future. I think household phones will start taking on more and more features of cell phones, such as more user friendly display's and features, and this could be one.

Great idea. Don't stop at an ignore list. Make a function in the phone that can recognize a person as one you will have to immediately call back, and automatically switch the call in the other direction. This would be useful for a person with "free" outgoing calls who is frequently called by a person who is charged per outgoing call.

This idea is a good one I would use it for annoying people or people i know want to sell me stuff.