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Ajit Pai Celebrates After Court Strikes Down Obama-Era Robocall Rule (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal judges have struck down an anti-robocall rule, saying that the Federal Communications Commission improperly treated every American who owns a smartphone as a potential robocaller. The FCC won't be appealing the court decision, as Chairman Ajit Pai opposed the rule changes when they were implemented by the commission's then-Democratic majority in 2015. Pai issued a statement praising the judges for the decision Friday, calling the now-vacated rule "yet another example of the prior FCC's disregard for the law and regulatory overreach." The FCC's 2015 decision said that a device meets the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) definition of an "autodialer" if it can be modified to make robocalls, even if the smartphone user hasn't actually downloaded an autodialing app. That interpretation treats all smartphones as autodialers because any smartphone has the capability of downloading an autodialing app, judges ruled. Since any call made by an autodialer could violate anti-robocall rules, this led to a troubling conclusion: judges said that an unwanted call from a smartphone could violate anti-robocall rules even if the smartphone user hasn't downloaded an autodialing app.
"The Commission's understanding would appear to subject ordinary calls from any conventional smartphone to the Act's coverage, an unreasonably expansive interpretation of the statute," a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a unanimous ruling Friday. The ruling came in a case filed against the FCC by the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, which says it represents "third-party collection agencies, law firms, asset buying companies, creditors, and vendor affiliates." Judges also invalidated an FCC rule that helped protect consumers from robocalls to reassigned phone numbers.
"The Commission's understanding would appear to subject ordinary calls from any conventional smartphone to the Act's coverage, an unreasonably expansive interpretation of the statute," a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a unanimous ruling Friday. The ruling came in a case filed against the FCC by the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, which says it represents "third-party collection agencies, law firms, asset buying companies, creditors, and vendor affiliates." Judges also invalidated an FCC rule that helped protect consumers from robocalls to reassigned phone numbers.
But I for one am happy I can't be hit with robocall fines and prosecution for simply dialing the wrong number.
So we can give him a few robocalls.
I'm really starting to not like this asshole....
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Face it, unlike the drug dealers who supply a valuable and desirable product, those behind these phone banks are the scum of the Earth, rotten pustules who deserve the death penalty.
And Pai, by supporting them, is clearly complicit in making us suffer. So let's get rid of his ass.
...Strikes again.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Why isn't it considered trespassing when someone uses my property to sell me something or to deliver a political spiel?
Lets be honest, any laws against robo-dialers wasn't working or couldn't being enforced anyway. Any call I get from a number that's not in my contacts goes straight to voicemail, which is then translated into a text message. In fact, I rarely get a phone call from someone in my contacts as most personal interaction has moved to text messages.
Or was it idiots who drafted the regulation?
I believe the HHGTTG summed it up best:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the Federal Communications Commission as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the Federal Communications Commission as “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Someone kill this fucking asshole.
Remember how popular the Do Not Call list implementation was when it was first implemented? When a technical glitch in the way the legislation was written threatened to delay implementation of the law, Congress took the unusual step of convening on a Sunday, as it did after Pearl Harbor, to make a fix and pass it.
For several years, Do Not Call gave the public blessed relief from junk solicitations - until the robocalls started, a new tech that Do Not Call was unable to address. Since then we have been desperately trying to do something, legally or technically, about robocalls.
If today's decision brings an even bigger flood of robocalls into the homes of Trump's base, it will very quickly no longer be Trump's base.
I think what Pai wanted in this case made sense. If you have a smart phone and havenâ(TM)t installed a robocalling app youâ(TM)re not a robocaller. Pretty straightforward.
If today's decision brings an even bigger flood of robocalls into the homes of Trump's base, it will very quickly no longer be Trump's base.
Do you believe that Trump supporters will connect an event in reality with Trump? Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything, no matter how unlikely.
of pro-consumer rules (Net Neutrality, restrictions on pay day lenders, Dodd-Frank, and now this) that are being stripped clean. Is anyone on this forum in favor of all this? If not, is anyone going to change how they vote in the coming elections? Because if not it doesn't matter one wit.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A few more words: Someone get his office, cell, and home (if he has one) number and make sure to sign him up for every phone marketing company there is, and we'll see how long his glib attitude lasts.
Every unwanted (ex. wrong number) from a cellphone went against anti-Robocall regulations.
The robocall/spam problem needs a technological solution ASAP not some half-baked rules. The DID was always and still is a problem!
We're supposed to believe that the ruling reduced robocalls? And that they might pick up in volume?
I don't know if anyone has noticed, but robocalls from spoofed numbers have been out of control for years. Neither this rule, nor any other rules are doing anything about them.
Your FCC have nasty virus and needs swamp cleaned.
Many robo calls are using arbitrary numbers now. They can do that if they have a particular type of service. I know this for sure because I have received calls from myself!
Then again, I guess it wasn't my smart phone that really initiated the call.
How about if we institute the death penalty for anybody that calls using a spoofed caller ID? Robocallers I can blacklist if they are honest about what number they are calling from!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
isajitpaistillacunt.com
Did you READ the article, or are you an illiterate millenial moron who's been "triggered"?
Seriously! WTF is wrong with you Trump haters? The Obama FCC passed a rule classifying any device that could be made capable of robo-dialing (which incluses ALL smartphones, since they can insstall auto-dial apps) as being a robo-dialer and thus ANYBODY making an unwanted phone call with one (including YOU calling your mom/boyfriend/girlfriend etc at an inconvemient moment) into a criminal. And beacuase Trump's FCC guy opposed your beloved "net neutrality"
scam (also known as the "help Apple/Facebook/Netflix get richer at the expense of telcos" rule) and because you hate Trump, you decide that this cell phone move to resore sanity is in some way EVIL.
Personally, I am happy that I can use a smartphone safe in the knowledge that if I call somebody at a bad time (or dial a wrong number) and they're in a bad mood at the time, they cannot sick the FCC on me and get me classified as a criminal. Thanks, Ajit Pai!
There are plenty of ways to go after robo-callers, and the big evil telcos (who sell these people hundreds of phone lines to make those damnable calls, while telling congress they have NO WAY of knowing who is doing it) without trying to make any smartphone user into a potential recipient of a huge fine and a criminal record (which was the Obama scheme you apparently love - YOU must be a robo-dialing junk call kingpin).
Noticed that Obama did NOTHING to actually stop robocalls when he had the White House, and his party had super-majorities in both the House and Senate?
(that was more power than the Republicans have had in over a century)
Noticed that when the Republican have the White House and both the House and Senate (admittedly by extremely thin margins) they too do nothing?
Corporate America makes out the best when they wisely buy-off politicians in BOTH parties (sadly for us).
The late comic genius Robin Williams probably had the best idea: we need congress critters to wear suits like NASCAR drivers - plastered with the logos of the corporations who back them. None of the usual campaign cash limit plans I have ever read would stop this, and term limits is an even worse idea since it would enable a corporation to back a candidate to get him in there to do quick damage in a hurry and get out - with the public never becoming familiar with any of them since they are never there long.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Because fuck the intent of the law. Intent has long been an important consideration in the courts, but not anymore when that gets in the way of your preferred outcome, which is not to upload established law and you can nitpick technical detail that aren't well-defined by non-technical lawmakers. Bizzarro America persists.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
If today's decision brings an even bigger flood of robocalls into the homes of Trump's base, it will very quickly no longer be Trump's base.
Quite the opposite: the bigger flood of robocalls that Trump's base will be getting in the run-up to the 2018 election will be filled with the sort of lies upon which their Trumpian views were built.
This did not make it OK to robocall everyone, it made it so you cell phone isn't classified as a robocall device. With all the robocall I received over the past year, it's obvious that the laws do very little to stop robocallers in the first place, because most of them come from offshore places.
Whew. Way to go, FCC. Obviously this is a huge problem. Huge. The courts must be packed with heinous cell phone users who have been arrested for violating this law. Does anyone have any numbers of how many people have been convicted and fined the $500 for this? Or gone to trial? Maybe arrested? Hello? Anyone? Come on. The DC Circuit US C of A has a solid, real-life, blood & guts example:
. Errrr.
Ok. So Mr Pai is diligently saving all Americans from a fate worse than ponies. IANAL, but the 2015 regulation does sound ill considered, although maybe their hearts were in the right place. In any case, Pai now has an excellent opportunity to restore respectability to his name, salvage his legacy, and drag his reputation back from Antenora in the Ninth Circle. He could enact regulations that will protect Americans from those pesky India-based telephone scammers. Surely he is working on it at this very moment.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I can't wait for the government regulators to finally solve the robocall issue.
I'm certainly enjoying the way they've solved the spam issue.
If today's decision brings an even bigger flood of robocalls into the homes of Trump's base, it will very quickly no longer be Trump's base.
Do you believe that Trump supporters will connect an event in reality with Trump? Well, I suppose there is a first time for everything, no matter how unlikely.
TRUMP supporters can't connect events in reality?
I got one word for that: Venezuela.
How's that Glorious Socialism working out for you, Comrade?
Stupid regulations. I am not a libertarian and I am all for government regulation. It's just the government regulation is an extremely complicated domain of technology. I wish that instead of fighting for votes of imbecile constituents bright minds from both parties were thinking together on how to regulate the unfathomable complexity of modern economy better.
And this particular one is an example of that.
Government regulation needs to be applied quickly in reaction to ever-going fight with the entropy of greed. You should not need to wait for the next election to raise or drop the taxes on a particular item by couple of percentage points. It should be done automatically by government computers.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
and I was not disappointed! Plenty of people did not read article and bashed Pai for endorsing a good decision. Because 'bad' people can never do 'good' things.
Trump or Venezuela?
What an ignorant, pathetic, tini, little world view you have.
The trump voter in a nutshell?
Does this mean we can robocall the absolute shit out of Ajit and the FCC?
I don't use my phone anymore because of telemarketers so I see no reason why this should change that.
Did I miss something about a party? I said no such thing.
Yes, apparently you did: the headline.
The headline said "Ajit Pai Celebrates". No celebration was mentioned in the article.
Theres nothing wrong with socialism you walnut, google socialist democracy and see how many of us in that list are ranked above the USA on the happiness index.
I hope that fucking clownshoes never works again after his stint at the FCC. Moronic doofus.
Meh.
If a number isn't in my Contacts, it gets ignored.
If they don't leave a message, it gets blocked.
If it's an automated message, it gets blocked.
If I can't find the number in Google, it gets blocked.
It doesn't take much time or effort.
To clarify, blocked means it goes directly to VM and I don't even know they called. If you have long VM instructions, they typically don't even bother to leave a message or it fucks with their automated systems.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
History disagrees with you
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Your approach mostly works on cellular, but the Trump base has landlines.
Two words, answering machine. For all the youngins out there, it's like voice mail, except the machine resides in your house instead of in the telco's server room. So while the specific implementation described by sycodon might not work for landlines, the spirit behind it works just fine.
This one was totally useless in defeating robocallers like so many other government regulations that are simply feel-good, do-something-NOW, vote-getters.
Your understanding of the Trump base is very limited.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's bigoted.
... were ever enforced, then it might matter. However, no agency ever enforces these laws and individuals can't recover enough in civil actions to make it worth suing.
What I do find interesting is how the Republicans aren't even pretending that they give a flying fuck about the people of this country, anymore. All they care about are the corporations and wealthy individuals.
Apparently, to American Christians, greed is next to Godliness.
The court has no say on the subject. It was not a law to begin with so the court's "opinion" has no validity. The FCC has no authority over our Internet connection or activity and will be obstructed any chance we can.
Yea because socialism and communism are the same thing.
Quick someone get this guys daughter a gun, she needs a safe space from thugs. LOL.
In implementation, both have lead to the suffering of millions.
See Venezuela for the most recent example.
So you should get yourself an education. It's free up to grade 12 (and no, that's not socialism).
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is this why I've gotten three "we have a warrant for your arrest" robocalls in the past twenty-four hours? Same recording, but each is from a different state. and I'm not American.
A DOS attack would go on endlessly. What the previous poster described would in theory end as soon as he got through and made his reservation, and it would not affect other people trying to get through at the same time as he is (if the line is truly busy).
I may not like his clever use of a robo-dial function to beat me to the reservation desk, but it's NOT a denial of service attack, and I do not think the Obama rule should have remained in place to make all smartphone users into criminals simply because we have phones that are capable of doing what he described IF we actually chose to install the required app. Remember: the Obama rule did not require the presence of such an app, just the ability of the phone to run such an app even if nobody had even written the app.
It just blows my mind that Ajit Pai haters are so into their hate that they do not even pay attention to the facts about his actions; they just follow any pied piper who tells the who to hate and offeres them a simple lie about why they should hate the hate target.
We had a narcissistic manchild in the White House for the past eight years doing treason daily, and survived that. Hell, you supporters did not bat an eye as Obama shipped truckloads of "assault rifles" to Mexican drug gangs (over 200 dead from those guns and counting), shipped pallets of unmarked currency to the largest state sponsor of tarrorism and an American enemy Iran (at a time when such transactions were a felony), used the IRS to go after his political opponents in the TEA Party, had a "kill list" of people who should be assasinated by drone even outside of any warzone, pretended he could write laws (DACA ring any bells?) had his AG acting as his "wingman" (google Eric Holder using that phrase). Did you see the video of Obama lifting weights? (ha ha ha)
Yup, Obama was actual treason, actual authoritarianism, actual corruption, and amn-child.
You accuse Trump of treason but you have NO evidence. All the media, all the Democrats, half the Republicans in DC, and the scum of the permanent DC governing class have used all their power for over a year and a half and have found NOTHING..... if they HAD found anything it would have been leaked long ago.
You accuse Trump of authoritarianism, but cite no example of him "writing his own laws" - his ending of DACA was not this, it was the ending of just ONE of Obama's numerous lawless authoritarian actions.
You accuse Trump of corruption, but you have NO evidence of it.
You are clearly just a very toxic and tortured soul who is full of hatred. You fling poo like a chimpanzee, but I bet you think Trump and his supporters are the "haters" and the "fascists". Find a mirror, dude.
Ae you REALLY so gullible and manipulable that you never noticed that the Obama era "net neutrality", which was hyped as protecting people from internet discrimination and censorship, only applied to the telcos (who companies like Google,Apple,Facebook,and Netflix were worried would begin competeing against them) and did not in ANY WAY apply to Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix etc who have been caught filtering content and censoring users?????
Did you REALLY never notice that there is no recorded incident of a TELCO blocking internet access to a user based on that user's political views, but there are numerous examples of Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc censoring users based on their politics?
True and honest "net neutrality" would not just have applied to the companies Apple, Google, Facebook, and Netflix want cheap data transport from, but would have applied to all data transport, data storage, and data serving companies on the net. THAT sort of "net neutrality" was NEVER going to happen under Obama when the CEO of Google was in the White House nearly once a week for the entire 8 years (far more often than a number of cabinet secretaries) and when about 200 Google employees moved back-and-forth through a revolving door of employment with the Obama administration.
Open your eyes, ignore the slogans that are served to you on social media by companies who have a dog in the fight, and start THINKING for yourself.
If so, please respond with them so we can call him.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The regulation (law) was vacated, not reinterpreted. So you failed on both claims.
It might be a good idea to relax your hair trigger when you hear the word "socialism". It's really not the same thing as communism. You were invited to google "socialist democracy" above, and I would like to repeat that invite.
Many fine countries embrace some degree of socialism. Yes, you can single out places where things have gone wrong, but that's true of any ideology. As stated above there are others that are highly successful & where the citizens are generally happy with things.
Even the good ol' USA has some socialist leaning institutions/policies; the VA and medicare are two that spring to mind.
I have also read an article that also discusses about robocall's laws at https://www.lemberglaw.com/wha.... The law is good and yeah, I really agree that these robocalls are very very annoying, but I agree that most of the FCC's rules are outdated and need to be updated.