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Comment by sprokolopolis | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of this, but I wonder if it will have much impact on the worst offenders. The most frequent and annoying calls are almost always using spoofed numbers and many times originating from outside the country, like India. Is there any way that this law could be enforced...

1)on calls originating outside the state or country?

2) on calls over spoofed numbers?

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Sure there is means within the phone industry to determine if the number offered up is the actual number. Last I remember the caller id function was independent of the ANI information.

Now calls are down to either my contact list or the caller leaving a message whose transcription I can review. All others just get ignored. It was bad enough when politicians wrote the laws in such a way their campaigns and charities did not have to have permission to call but with VOIP being abused so much my phone isn't my own.

with regards to the political exception in calls, how will the Federal rule align with the state rule. it was specifically carved out to allow political calls in the do not call system

Generally speaking if there is a federal law explicitly allowing political calls of a given nature (e.g. robocalls over VOIP) a state law cannot disallow them. It depends on the exact wording of each, and the willingness of both parties to go to court. Even if it's illegal, that only matters when someone is willing to (literally) make a federal case over it.

Agreeing that a thing should be illegal is step 1. At minimum, it allows for prosecution of the most obvious offenders.

And ultimately, money usually trickles back. Why would you be calling Californians if you didn't have an interest (business or otherwise) in California?

No, not this law, because (contrary to the current HN title) it does not apply to telephone calls. Its scope is "any public-facing Internet Web site, Web application, or digital application, including a social network or publication".

Make it illegal to be a carrier of those calls, then let the telephone networks figure out how best to block them.

This bill isn’t limited to phone calls. It also applies to any bot on any social media site that receives more than 10mm visitors per month that exists to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction”. In other words, a Facebook Messenger bot answering pre-sale questions is violating this law unless it has a massive disclosure about it being a bot. At first glance it also appears that this law would make chats in which a bot handles most but not all of the interaction illegal. For example, an online chat with a support tech that begins with an automated “this is Larry, how can I help you?” seems to be illegal under this law. Larry exists, but the bot is “impersonating” Larry during the automated portions of the conversation. This is a poorly thought out, overly broad law.

One sidenote...HN really needs a way to just “save” articles. I didn’t want to upvote this article, because that sends the wrong signal - that I am somehow in favor of unworkable regulations. I didn’t want to “favorite” it either, because this certainly doesn’t fall into the category of my favorite articles that I’d like to keep around on that list for a long time. But I do want to keep track of the discussion today, because I find it fascinating just how many technologists are in favor of onerous regulations governing their own industry. Currently, there is no way to simply save an article on HN without upvoting or favoriting it.

I don't think upvoting is meant to be a signal that you agree with the article - only that you think the article should be seen and discussed by the HN community. You clearly do think this, so an upvote is appropriate. After all, upvoting an 'X has died' post doesn't mean that you're glad they're gone!

You could also simply bookmark the page.

Re:bookmarking, I always forget to delete it. I guess I should create a Chrome extension that lets me create a temporary bookmark that will automatically be deleted after X period of time. With regard to upvoting, I'd say articles like this fall in a different category than the death announcements. If you upvote this one, especially given the overwhelmingly positive response to it in the comments, you're at least tacitly endorsing it. Lawmakers that might have rejected this bill because it outlaws many legitimate tasks performed by chat bots might look at the number of upvotes and say "a community of tech people on the web really like it!" and vote for it. I certainly wouldn't want to play even a minor role in the passage of a bill such as this one. I'm not sure that the nuances of upvoting are going to be clear to everyone that visits HN.

> At first glance it also appears that this law would make chats in which a bot handles most but not all of the interaction illegal.

Only illegal if it isn't disclosed that it's a bot ("A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot."), and the bill doesn't dictate the form of that disclosure, only that it must be "clear, conspicuous, and reasonably designed to inform persons with whom the bot communicates or interacts that it is a bot".

Upvoting is not an expression of support for the content, it's a "I think this article should be seen by more people" signal.

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