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The Telecom Digest for Fri, 25 Sep 2020
Volume 39 : Issue 248 : "text" format

table of contents
TCPA Litigation Update – The US Government Sides With Facebook – This Should Make Things Easy For SCOTUS
FCC Holds that Fax Broadcasters are Solely Responsible for TCPA Violations When They Deceive Advertisers
Re: Strike 3 Saga: Turning BitTorrent Downloads Into A Copyright Infringement Settlement Machine Part 2
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <86o8lxvx8b.fsf@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu> Date: 23 Sep 2020 06:11:16 +0000 From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: TCPA Litigation Update - The US Government Sides With Facebook - This Should Make Things Easy For SCOTUS by Joshua Briones and Nicole V. Ozeran Earlier this month, Facebook filed its brief in Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid. As we previously reported, in Duguid, the US Supreme Court will finally consider the question of "[w]hether the definition of ATDS in the TCPA encompasses any device that can 'store' and 'automatically dial' telephone numbers, even if the device does not 'us[e] a random or sequential number generator'" (Facebook Brief at i) - a question that has long plagued defendants and caused growing circuit splits. https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/social-media/986822/tcpa-litigation-update-the-us-government-sides-with-facebook-this-should-make-things-easy-for-scotus?email_access=on -- Bill Horne Telecom Digest Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <2c899c04-abd1-cedf-caeb-244ae0897d15@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:25:28 -0400 From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org> Subject: FCC Holds that Fax Broadcasters are Solely Responsible for TCPA Violations When They Deceive Advertisers On September 21, 2020, the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau issued a Declaratory Ruling resolving a petition that sought confirmation that in instances in which an advertiser is "stripped of [its] ability to control the fax campaign or ensure compliance with the TCPA" because of a fax broadcaster's "deception, fraud, blatant contract violations and misrepresentations," the advertiser is no longer the "sender" of the fax and, therefore, only the fax broadcaster is liable. The FCC granted the petition(1), clarifying that "a fax broadcaster is solely liable for TCPA violations when it engages in deception or fraud against the advertiser." https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fcc-holds-fax-broadcasters-are-solely-responsible-tcpa-violations-when-they-deceive 1. <https://www.fcc.gov/document/cgb-grants-akin-gumps-petition-declaratory-ruling-tcpa-issue> ------------------------------ Message-ID: <8c6672cd-b281-59f3-d1eb-5ec601881ee6@ionary.com> Date: 24 Sep 2020 10:32:32 -0400 From: "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: Strike 3 Saga: Turning BitTorrent Downloads Into A Copyright Infringement Settlement Machine Part 2 On 9/23/2020 3:55 PM, Moderator wrote: > Appellate Courts Recognize Strike 3's Ability to Meet Standard for Early > Discovery to Obtain John Doe Defendant's Name and Address > ... > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > That's not even to mention the Linux binaries that I get via BitTorrent: > if some preteder-to-the-Linux-throne *COUGH*Redhat*COUGH* decides to > make an example of someone like me, what then? Uh, no, Bill. Red Hat, which is now one of the more profitable parts of IBM, would not attempt anything stupid like that. Linux is all under the GPL and very much "free as in speech". Red Hat did have a little proprietary software, but it's not the core of Linux, just extras they sell (now as IBM). There was, of course, a case about 15 years ago, wherein The SCO Group, which had at one point been a minor Linux distributor, decided to sue IBM and everyone else distributing or using Linux for patent and copyright infringement. They claimed that they owned Unix, having bought it from AT&T, and that Linux copied from Unix. It was preposterous, of course, but people make nutty claims and sometimes sell shares based on it. The case went on for a few years, eventually proving that SCO did not own Unix, just had a master license to distribute it, and that Linux was in any case original. Oh, and the claim that BSD (Open Source) too had copied from AT&T? That one got shown to be backwards; Berkeley's work was largely original and AT&T had taken some code from it. - - Fred R. Goldstein k1io fred "at" interisle.net Interisle Consulting Group +1 617 795 2701 ***** Moderator's Note ***** RedHat not only attempted, but accomplished, something like that: the company exploited the open-source movement and managed to convince corporate America that it owned an operating system called "RedHat Enterprise Linux," after it relied on hackers like me to popularize its brand name. Not only did RedHat prove that the average IT purchasing manager is a gullible fool, but it got very rich, very quickly, and then its owners cashed out to IBM and settled in to laughing themselves to sleep every night, while those of us who had made them their money were relegated to "Enthusiast" status and told that we would henceforth be allowed access only to the "Fedora" brand of products, so that we would be "privileged" to do RedHat's beta testing for them. When we all finally got to see the man behind the curtain, I ranted about RedHat's business model and tactics in several posts to the Boston Linux & Unix User Group's discussion list: FYI, I've included some of the links here. http://blu.org/pipermail/discuss/2003-November/017846.html http://blu.org/pipermail/discuss/2003-November/018051.html Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Fri, 25 Sep 2020
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