Cental, the bottom line is, the nature of the internet for internet relay makes it impossible to stop fraud.
1) The Internet is anonymous. By design, it is meant to be possible to hide your actions behind a computer with a random internet address.
2) The internet is not governed by any one body. The FCC can't say, "well, because of internet relay fraud, all IP addresses must now be assigned to Africa, Asia, South America, yadda yadda..." No one OWNS the internet and no one can make you conform to U.S. rules of the internet.
I highly doubt they were "able to block them originally." I would guess that it wasn't a large problem or popular with scammers until recently.
Registration does zilch. I sign up for extra Yahoo accounts for spam email all the time. What's to stop a fraudulent person from signing up, again and again, with false information and false email addresses, under new accounts for each fraud call? There's no proof of deafness required.
Registration doesn't make it harder to do fraud -- It just inconveniences people like me who don't want to sign up for i711.com. I bet it also costs money to pay for maintaining a database of users, thus the FCC would have to pay MORE.
The FCC DID do something about it -- they ruled that no one can block calls based on content.
Okay, now, solutions:
1) Get rid of internet relay. That's the cheapest and quickest option for the FCC to enact. Will they do it? I dunno.
2) Educate businesses about fraud calls. It's no different from any other fraud call -- a REAL telephone call using the same fraud methods WILL work. Stop the merchandise from being shipped, and the frauds will be out of business.
3) Make internet relay calls be charged long distance telephone fees. Require a credit card or calling card before every call and charge 10 cents a minute because you can't tell where the call is coming from.
