
Federal judges have struck down an anti-robocall rule - joeyespo
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/ajit-pai-celebrates-after-court-strikes-down-obama-era-robocall-rule/
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whack
Maybe the rule had good intentions, but I agree with the court's ruling. The
rule, as written, is far too broad.

 _" 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.

Imagine, for instance, that a person wishes to send an invitation for a social
gathering to a person she recently met for the first time. If she lacks prior
express consent to send the invitation, and if she obtains the acquaintance's
cell phone number from a mutual friend, she ostensibly commits a violation of
federal law by calling or sending a text message from her smartphone to extend
the invitation. And if she sends a group message inviting 10 people to the
gathering, again without securing prior express consent from any of the
recipients, she not only would have infringed the TCPA 10 distinct times but
would also face a minimum damages recovery against her of $5,000."_

~~~
nonbel
> _Imagine, for instance, that a person wishes to send an invitation for a
> social gathering to a person she recently met for the first time. If she
> lacks prior express consent to send the invitation, and if she obtains the
> acquaintance 's cell phone number from a mutual friend, she ostensibly
> commits a violation of federal law by calling or sending a text message from
> her smartphone to extend the invitation. And if she sends a group message
> inviting 10 people to the gathering, again without securing prior express
> consent from any of the recipients, she not only would have infringed the
> TCPA 10 distinct times but would also face a minimum damages recovery
> against her of $5,000."_

Who wants to receive calls from a friend of a friend to invite them to a
party? Why not ask the friend to invite their friend if you want them to come?
This does sound like spammy behavior to me, yet these laws are clearly
unsuitable.

Maybe people should have an option to be paid some small amount for each call
from a number not on their whitelist that they accept. It would also have the
interesting consequence of creating a market for wasting the spammers time.

~~~
8ytecoder
It's perfectly acceptable in social situations to get a number of friend from
a friend to send them a text message or a phone call.

~~~
nonbel
> _" It's perfectly acceptable in social situations to get a number of friend
> from a friend to send them a text message or a phone call."_

Sure, and I have done this many times. But if we append "to invite them to
their party" to your statement it becomes "kind of weird". If we also add that
they are doing this to many people at once, it becomes "even more strange".

~~~
landryraccoon
“Weird” should be enforced socially and not by making it a crime enforced by
the government.

If a friend of a friend texts you weirdly, tell your friend to tell them to
knock it off. Getting the government involved is totally disproportionate.

~~~
nonbel
I agree, which I why I wrote: "these laws are clearly unsuitable"

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frankosaurus
For me personally, robocalls outnumber legit call calls 10:1 these days.

Interestingly, most robocalls I get come from numbers that match the first 6
digits of my own phone number. I don't know why they do that, but it makes it
easier to screen calls.

~~~
jethro_tell
They do that because it makes it harder for me to screen calls, I have kids at
schools where landlines will have the same first 6 digits, if I get a call
like that, I assume that it's a garbage call but I have to answer it in case I
need to pick up a child or go to the doctor.

~~~
ryandrake
Add a contact in your address book with the school’s number(s)? Sure there is
still a small chance of collision with the spammers’ fake numbers, but it
should help.

My mobile gets an average of 3 robocalls a day, so I’m 100% whitelist at this
point. If the caller’s number is not in my address book it gets ignored.

~~~
eridius
That requires you to actually know the number they'll be calling from though.

~~~
jethro_tell
Also, assumes that it's not a local teacher calling from a cell phone.

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lacker
In practice, I am getting more and more robocalls nowadays on my cell phone,
about one every couple days. I wish my phone had the ability to only pick up
when it was a human-dialed call.

~~~
millzlane
I've had amazing success with the "Should I answer?" App.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mistergrou...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mistergroup.muzutozvednout&hl=en)

>The database is built-up by the community of all users who have the
application installed and/or visiting the application pages. The users can
anonymously send ratings and reviews for public phone numbers (we do not
collect info for private numbers) based on real answered calls. These ratings
are stored in central server database where our admins can check them and
after evaluation and approval the reviews with ranking are then distributed to
all mobile phones with our application installed.

~~~
anomie31
Can I download this database?

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ravenstine
I get robocalls every single day. The problem is telecom companies don't care
because even if we all turned off phone calls, we're still paying them for
mobile internet.

I've turned on call-rejection for all calls for a year now, and it's been
fine. More people should do this.

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delecti
I'm having trouble understanding what the motivation for such a rule could
have been in the first place. Certainly cellphones can't be the origin of
enough genuine robocalls for this to have been necessary to curb them.

~~~
danso
Maybe they represented a small percentage of calls compared to traditional
mass-callers, but smartphones gives everybody the capability of using software
to automate phone activity.

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nokcha
I'm annoyed that origin spoofing (i.e., falsified caller ID) is not blocked by
the telecoms. It seems like it would be easy enough to do if mandated by
Congress. And for incoming calls from foreign networks, at the least they
could identify it as a non-US number.

~~~
colejohnson66
Because there are legitimate uses for caller ID spoofing

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nokcha
The only legitimate use is setting it to another number that you own. It would
be relatively easy for telecoms to allow this but block all other
falsification of caller ID.

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r00fus
Does anyone understand the implications of the revocation of the "one-call
safe harbor"?

Does this mean that if I switch numbers and I get a bunch of spam for the
previous owner of that number, I have to go and opt-out all over again?

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matt_wulfeck
We’re quickly approaching a place where I’m ready to send all voice calls not
in contacts to /dev/null. Not even voicemail, but to the ether. If a company
wants to get ahold of me, they can send me an email or a text message.

~~~
convolvatron
last two days I've gotten unsolicited sms messages, in batches of 5. one set
from a woman supposedly looking for a good time, and the other political spam.

i don't see any reason why sms isn't going to end up the same trash heap that
email (try running a server without a filter) and voice have become

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plandis
I’ll bet money that Ajit won’t do anything to curb VoIP robocallers. They are
scamming money out of American consumers so that’s kind of a bummer.

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horsecaptin
Time to download that Robocall app and call the FCC about why this was a dumb
idea.

