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Remove their common carrier status and enforce content filtering? I know this is just a knee-jerk comment, but I hope on reflection you can see how catastrophic

Remove their common carrier status and enforce content filtering? I know this is just a knee-jerk comment, but I hope on reflection you can see how catastrophically terrible that idea is.

TylerE 7y ago
At some point the cure is in fact not worse than the disease. Robocalls are so bad at this point that, if I could get away with it, I wouldn't have a phone number, at all. I also think that common carriers can still ban such activity. The common carrier statute says carriers may not "unreasonably discriminate* against customers. I have to imagine most sane individuals would consider cutting off customers engaged in obviously illegal activity as, in fact, reasonable. Just like USPS can turn over packages containing drugs to the Feds.
- 542458 7y ago
  Some days my call log is a solid wall of dozens of calls coming from (ostensibly) Chad or Nigeria or whatever that are pulling the one-ring scam. The number is different every time so there’s no blocking it. It’s out of control.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Around here they mostly spoof local numbers. E.g. My number is ABC-DEF-1234, I'll get calls from ABC-DEF-7899.
- josephorjoe 7y ago
  Yeah, if the primary economic model of a phone number is to allow 3rd parties to spam individuals, then the phone number needs to die.
- livueta 7y ago
  If that were the only way of eliminating robocalls you might have a point, but I think this situation is a good example of a case where relatively targeted regulation coupled with technical progress (develop+mandate SHAKEN/STIR and allow for an ecosystem of filtering solutions based on accurate caller origin info) is preferable to draconian regulation (enormous fines are totally ignored, revoking common-carrier status/other liability changes have a fractal of side-effects).
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  For starters what you’re suggesting is logically equivalent to completely removing all net neutrality principles. Allowing service providers complete discretion over service discrimination. Just think about what you’re suggesting for more than a second. Do you want your base contract to only allow you to send and receive calls within the service providers network? Do you want to have people trying to call you get caught up in an endless web of spam filters? Do want to have to pay extra for the ability to receive calls from over seas? How do you think developing economies would fare if they could essentially never make a phone call to the US again? Because all that and worse would be an inevitable outcome of the rules you’re suggesting. The phone system is an open and distributed system, just like email is. It’s everything HN should love. But then you get comments like this which at the first sign of a system showing its natural distributed-system-related short comings, are all of a sudden asking for centralised walled gardens.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    No, I'm not. There is a massive difference between discriminating based on who the customers are, and discriminating based on "all customers doing this one specifically completely illegal thing".
542458 7y ago
I’m not an expert, but: Can’t common carriers discriminate if there’s compelling reason? Like, a railway can refuse to carry a passenger if they’re disruptive to others. My ISP can cut me off if I’m running DDOS attacks. Is there any reason a (common) phone carrier shouldn’t be able to refuse service to a call that they believe is illegal in nature?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  They can, but if you make them liable for bad actors then you immediately force them to implement very heavy restrictions on what they carry. For instance if HN didn’t enjoy common carrier liability protections then user submitted links and comments would be pretty much impossible to implement (they’d all need to go through a moderation queue).
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Websites are not common carriers. You’re thinking of the DMCA Safe Harbor provision, maybe.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants common carrier liability protections to websites that publish user generated content. You’re right that they’re not common carriers (because they are in fact allowed to discriminate in any way they choose), but I was exclusively referring to the liability protections they are afforded by the law.
viraptor 7y ago
For the record, this is exactly what the bill defines. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151... It enforces the carriers to implement the authention/blocking/reporting system. It also talks about misclassification and fail-safes too. FCC should create rules: > establishing a safe harbor for a provider of voice service from liability for unintended or inadvertent blocking of calls or for the unintended or inadvertent misidentification of the level of trust for individual calls based, in whole or in part, on information provided by the call authentication frameworks under subsection
myself248 7y ago
No, but consider something like "In order to operate as a common carrier, you must deliver accurate ANI/CID/whatever info, and you must only peer with providers who do the same. Failure to depeer violators will place your own operating license in jeopardy." With a list of exceptions for legit stuff like setting a company's inwats number as CID even if the call comes from a branch, etc. I'm sure there's a finite universe of such cases. The calls don't bother me so much as the spoofing does. I can do my own filtering if I have accurate info to work from. It's the havens allowing bad info into the network that we need to aggressively exclude.

Remove their common carrier status and enforce content filtering? I know this is just a knee-jerk comment, but I hope on reflection you can see how catastrophically terrible that idea is.

TylerE 7y ago

At some point the cure is in fact not worse than the disease. Robocalls are so bad at this point that, if I could get away with it, I wouldn't have a phone number, at all. I also think that common carriers can still ban such activity. The common carrier statute says carriers may not "unreasonably discriminate* against customers. I have to imagine most sane individuals would consider cutting off customers engaged in obviously illegal activity as, in fact, reasonable. Just like USPS can turn over packages containing drugs to the Feds.

542458 7y ago
Some days my call log is a solid wall of dozens of calls coming from (ostensibly) Chad or Nigeria or whatever that are pulling the one-ring scam. The number is different every time so there’s no blocking it. It’s out of control.
- TylerE 7y ago
  Around here they mostly spoof local numbers. E.g. My number is ABC-DEF-1234, I'll get calls from ABC-DEF-7899.
josephorjoe 7y ago
Yeah, if the primary economic model of a phone number is to allow 3rd parties to spam individuals, then the phone number needs to die.
livueta 7y ago
If that were the only way of eliminating robocalls you might have a point, but I think this situation is a good example of a case where relatively targeted regulation coupled with technical progress (develop+mandate SHAKEN/STIR and allow for an ecosystem of filtering solutions based on accurate caller origin info) is preferable to draconian regulation (enormous fines are totally ignored, revoking common-carrier status/other liability changes have a fractal of side-effects).
AmericanChopper 7y ago
For starters what you’re suggesting is logically equivalent to completely removing all net neutrality principles. Allowing service providers complete discretion over service discrimination. Just think about what you’re suggesting for more than a second. Do you want your base contract to only allow you to send and receive calls within the service providers network? Do you want to have people trying to call you get caught up in an endless web of spam filters? Do want to have to pay extra for the ability to receive calls from over seas? How do you think developing economies would fare if they could essentially never make a phone call to the US again? Because all that and worse would be an inevitable outcome of the rules you’re suggesting. The phone system is an open and distributed system, just like email is. It’s everything HN should love. But then you get comments like this which at the first sign of a system showing its natural distributed-system-related short comings, are all of a sudden asking for centralised walled gardens.
- TylerE 7y ago
  No, I'm not. There is a massive difference between discriminating based on who the customers are, and discriminating based on "all customers doing this one specifically completely illegal thing".

542458 7y ago

I’m not an expert, but: Can’t common carriers discriminate if there’s compelling reason? Like, a railway can refuse to carry a passenger if they’re disruptive to others. My ISP can cut me off if I’m running DDOS attacks. Is there any reason a (common) phone carrier shouldn’t be able to refuse service to a call that they believe is illegal in nature?

AmericanChopper 7y ago
They can, but if you make them liable for bad actors then you immediately force them to implement very heavy restrictions on what they carry. For instance if HN didn’t enjoy common carrier liability protections then user submitted links and comments would be pretty much impossible to implement (they’d all need to go through a moderation queue).
- TylerE 7y ago
  Websites are not common carriers. You’re thinking of the DMCA Safe Harbor provision, maybe.
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants common carrier liability protections to websites that publish user generated content. You’re right that they’re not common carriers (because they are in fact allowed to discriminate in any way they choose), but I was exclusively referring to the liability protections they are afforded by the law.

viraptor 7y ago

For the record, this is exactly what the bill defines. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151... It enforces the carriers to implement the authention/blocking/reporting system. It also talks about misclassification and fail-safes too. FCC should create rules: > establishing a safe harbor for a provider of voice service from liability for unintended or inadvertent blocking of calls or for the unintended or inadvertent misidentification of the level of trust for individual calls based, in whole or in part, on information provided by the call authentication frameworks under subsection

myself248 7y ago

No, but consider something like "In order to operate as a common carrier, you must deliver accurate ANI/CID/whatever info, and you must only peer with providers who do the same. Failure to depeer violators will place your own operating license in jeopardy." With a list of exceptions for legit stuff like setting a company's inwats number as CID even if the call comes from a branch, etc. I'm sure there's a finite universe of such cases. The calls don't bother me so much as the spoofing does. I can do my own filtering if I have accurate info to work from. It's the havens allowing bad info into the network that we need to aggressively exclude.