Is a Fax an Email? FCC Says Yes, Junk Fax Rules Don't Apply

• The FCC Declatory Ruling Says Yes, but that's not always the case. 
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Right before the COVID outbreak, over the 2019-2020 holiday season, something profound happened, but it went below the radar. Declaratory Ruling DA-19-1247 says faxes are emails and thus Junk Fax rules are moot. 

Here's the FCC Description of the Declaratory Ruling  DA-19-1247

"By this declaratory ruling, we make clear that an online fax service that effectively receives faxes “sent as email over the Internet” and is not itself “equipment which has the capacity . . . to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper” is not a “telephone facsimile machine” and thus falls outside the scope of the statutory prohibition."

This is good news for defendants, but not in those cases where the recipient endpoint is a fax machine or MFP. Those plaintiffs have a leg to stand on. 

The 'faxes' are sent via a telephone number, telco carriers transmit them, but on the recipient end, it's an email in an inbox somewhere; no tied-up phone line, no waste of paper and toner. Is it really this simple?

Link is here

• Full Title: Amerifactors Financial Group, LLC Petition for Expedited Declaratory Ruling; Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991; Junk Fax Protection Act 1995
• Document Type(s): Order
• Bureau(s): Consumer and Governmental Affairs

Description:
Granted a request for declaratory ruling that online fax services that receive faxes fall outside of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's prohibitions on telephone facsimile machines

• DA/FCC #: DA-19-1247
• Docket/RM: 02-278, 05-338
• FCC Record Citation: 34 FCC Rcd 11950 (15)

FCC Record: DA-19-1247A1_Rcd.pdf

And the Consensus is...Their Identity Crisis is Over!

Well it's about time, J2 is going to split into two companies. Let's face it, they were ALWAYS two companies. Digital Media and eFax -- VCR repair and dry cleaning. Apples to oranges? Try apples to chickens. 

Why didn't they do this long ago?  Maybe they wanted to stay together for the kids, or maybe they thought somehow their portfolio would eventually make sense. Fax was starting to get itself in shape, looking good, and looking for a new love and they found it. 

The lure of the healthcare market was enough to change identities, forge new alliances, and rebrand as Consensus. The inevitable was coming the writing was on the wall, two entities that never had anything in common finally realized it was over.  

Here's the press release.