This humorously written article explains more of what actually transpired, when
our corrupted FCC eliminated another consumer protection last year. The
situation has similarities to the net neutrality mandate of 2015.
Back in 2014, and many years before that too, the FCC had tried to force
(broadband) ISPs to be content-neutral. But by a dumb error OF THEIR OWN
MAKING, back in 2002, the FCC was consistently overruled, in their attempts.
What was the FCC's dumbass mistake? It was to classify broadband service as an
information service.
So, the courts repeatedly told the FCC, "You cannot mandate neutrality of
service, because YOU HAVE classified broadband ISP service like some random
information service." Similar to, say, some blog written by some flake. No one
expects blogs, or most other web sites, to have to be content neutral. Would
you expect a site for evangelical Christians to give equal time to every other
denomination and religion of the world? So, FCC, the courts kept hinting,
freakin' reclassify broadband service, will you?
https://securitygladiators.com/robocalls-fcc/
Much the same thing has happened with robocalls, although naturally, this FCC
is intellectually too feeble to fix their own mistakes. Or too corrupted, take
your pick. Looking at exerpts from the article of that URL:
"Ajit Pai seems unable to contain his celebrations after a United States court
struck down the robocall rule from the Obama Administration era."
Yes, once again, shirking his responsibilities.
"The Federal Communications Commission had treated (rather improperly) people
who had a smartphone as a robocaller (or potential robocaller to be more
precise)."
Please pay attention: *The FCC* had treated people who had smartphones as de
facto robocallers. That was the original mistake. The rule forbidding
auto-dialing of random or sequential numbers, per se, was *not* the problem.
The problem was only how the FCC defined included smartphones as robocalling
devices.
"Under current United States Law, an autodialer basically represents a device.
A device which has the capacity to actually perform functions such as producing
and/or storing telephone number using a sequential and/or random number
generator. Moreover, an autodialer further has the capability to dial those
generated numbers. ... The Federal Communications Commission made the
tremendous error of stating that any smartphone device’s capacity to make
illegal robocalls **included potential functionalities**. Anyone could enable
these functionalities by simply downloading a smartphone device application.
This is what the judges wrote in their ruling."
An honest FCC would correct their error, not shirk their responsibilities, as
this one keeps doing. The Tom Wheeler FCC was smart enough to know how, wrt
mandating net neutrality. The current FCC is either too dumb, or too corrupt,
to do what the people expect of them.
Bert
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