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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.
Sorry for self-replying. TFA, and another poster, point out that this rule has been vacated (not just modified) so now there may be no legal restrictions on robocall devices.
Unless, of course, the current board passes a new regulation. [*crickets*]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Because it isn't trespassing. Other users are not using your property. They are transmitting signals to a network. You have voluntarily allowed your phone to connect to the network. You are receiving other people's calls because you have specifically allowed this action when you signed your phone contract. The problem is that some folks are abusing this, and are doing so in a way that will specifically impede your attempt to stop it (caller ID spoofing etc.).
It's abuse, it may even be harassment. But it is not trespassing.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Actually, they just spoof the first 6 digits of your number and add a random 4 digits on the end, to make you think it's one of your neighbors calling. Problem is, like most people, my number just indicates where I lived 15 years ago when I first got my cell phone, so I literally don't know anybody with a similar number!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
TFA, and another poster, point out that this rule has been vacated (not just modified) so now there may be no legal restrictions on robocall devices.
Unless, of course, the current board passes a new regulation. [*crickets*]
TFA and the other poster clearly didn't read the opinion. The TCPA as a whole remains intact -- the only nuances that were rolled back were (1) the FCC's prior interpretation that smartphones constituted automated telephone dialing systems, and (2) the FCC's prior interpretation that companies using automatic dialers could be held liable for calling a phone number that used to be owned by someone who had given the company consent to call them, but then was (unbeknownst to the caller) transferred to someone else.
Meanwhile, as was all over the news at the time, the FCC actually issued MORE rules clamping down MORE on actual robocallers back in November. Crickets indeed.
you probably missed this part of Pai's statement:
Instead of sweeping into a regulatory dragnet the hundreds of millions of American consumers who place calls or send text messages from smartphones, the FCC should be targeting bad actors who bombard Americans with unlawful robocalls. That’s why I’m pleased today’s ruling does not impact (and, in fact, acknowledges) the current FCC’s efforts to combat illegal robocalls and spoofing. We will continue to pursue consumer-friendly policies on this issue, from reducing robocalls to reassigned numbers to call authentication to blocking illegal robocalls. And we’ll maintain our strong approach to enforcement against spoofers and scammers, including the over $200 million in fines that we proposed last year.
so now there may be no legal restrictions on robocall devices.
Sure there are. The FTC already regulates robocallers (and the Do Not Call list) separately from the FCC.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/f...
As much as I don’t like Pai, this ruling, at least on its face, isn’t necessarily the horrible thing it’s being made out to be, since the FTC has been providing better regulation on this issue for far longer, and has been enlisting technology companies to provide solutions to the issue as well.
If these assholes were actually anything other than disingenuous, overpaid lickspittles, they'd do something about Caller ID spoofing.
Um, they did exactly that last November. And even before they issued the new rules, they cracked down on two spoofing robocallers last year to the tune of $82 million and $120 million.
Maybe you would have known that had you spent just a bit more time actually reading up on the subject and a bit less time throwing around inflammatory rhetoric.
There are a large number of people who assume that any set of federal rules are bad by the mere fact that they are rules coming from the federal government. At the moment several of those people hold important positions of power in the US.