Slashdot Mirror
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.
Look, I'm no fan of Pai, but on its face, this ruling looks reasonable. From TFS, I gather that until now, a smartphone could be considered an autodialer even if it was not configured to be one. Now, if I read this correctly, you have to install autodialing software on your phone for it to be considered an autodialer.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If you read the court's opinion (or even the summary), it clearly says the FCC's overreach was considering "ordinary calls from any conventional smartphone" to fall under robocall regulation. Putting aside your obvious dislike of Pai, do you honestly believe they should?
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.
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.
I'm probably wasting my keystrokes since your post suggests you're more into trying to score cheap partisan points rather than actually understanding the issues, but one of the primary issues with overbroad laws with harsh penalties and one of the primary reasons courts strike them down (you realize this was a federal district court decision, not the FCC, right?) is the chilling effect they have on legitimate behavior.
Using smaller words, when the FCC states an intent to levy fines of $500 per "uninvited call" from a cell phone, a small business with no land line would have to feel exquisitely lucky to call someone from a cell phone who didn't call them first. The amount of explicit enforcement action says nothing about how many people simply forego behavior that everyone agrees should be lawful out of fear that they'll be one of the first examples.
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.
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.