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Serious question here - legally, what's the difference between a google-bot calling my place of business and a robocall, which is illegal in the US and Californ

Serious question here - legally, what's the difference between a google-bot calling my place of business and a robocall, which is illegal in the US and California?

killjoywashere 9y ago
Agency and the intent of the beneficiary strike me as relevant issues. However, one can readily imagine someone using a system like this to hold hostage the schedules of many, many service businesses. Think OpenTable with no intervening agreement between the restraunt and the intermediary.
lsb 9y ago
The google-bot calling your place of business is tantamount to someone's butler calling your place of business. Often time, people prefer talking to professional appointment-bookers. Sometimes, not. When HR departments are recruiting, they avoid talking to agencies, with language like "principals only".
- nfoz 9y ago
  Ah, so I suppose there are two dimensions: 1) The caller has a business-reason for initiating the call; if the receiver doesn't want that sort of call, it's a problem (spam calls). 2) The caller is a robot, and the receiver might not want to accept calls from robots, and now they might not even know it's a robot with which to have an informed opinion. I wonder which one the robo-call laws are trying to cover, if not both. Google's certainly doing both, what's new is that the receiver is being misled about (2) and possibly even (1).
dragonwriter 9y ago
What is illegal, IIRC, is a pre-recorded call, outside of certain prescribed bounds. Duplex calls do not appear to be pre-recorded. It's unclear whether those regulating pre-recorded calls would have treated interactive automated transactional calls the same had they anticipated them, so I don't think it makes sense to blindly treat them as equivalent without new legislation. Whether they should, on the merits, be regulated, and if so whether with the same or a different model, is perhaps an interesting debate.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Serious question here - legally, what's the difference between a google-bot calling my place of business and a robocall, which is illegal in the US and California?

killjoywashere 9y ago

Agency and the intent of the beneficiary strike me as relevant issues. However, one can readily imagine someone using a system like this to hold hostage the schedules of many, many service businesses. Think OpenTable with no intervening agreement between the restraunt and the intermediary.

lsb 9y ago

The google-bot calling your place of business is tantamount to someone's butler calling your place of business. Often time, people prefer talking to professional appointment-bookers. Sometimes, not. When HR departments are recruiting, they avoid talking to agencies, with language like "principals only".

nfoz 9y ago
Ah, so I suppose there are two dimensions: 1) The caller has a business-reason for initiating the call; if the receiver doesn't want that sort of call, it's a problem (spam calls). 2) The caller is a robot, and the receiver might not want to accept calls from robots, and now they might not even know it's a robot with which to have an informed opinion. I wonder which one the robo-call laws are trying to cover, if not both. Google's certainly doing both, what's new is that the receiver is being misled about (2) and possibly even (1).

dragonwriter 9y ago

What is illegal, IIRC, is a pre-recorded call, outside of certain prescribed bounds. Duplex calls do not appear to be pre-recorded. It's unclear whether those regulating pre-recorded calls would have treated interactive automated transactional calls the same had they anticipated them, so I don't think it makes sense to blindly treat them as equivalent without new legislation. Whether they should, on the merits, be regulated, and if so whether with the same or a different model, is perhaps an interesting debate.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]