At least in the US, the FCC largely ignores amateur radio and related services. Unless they start causing interference with other services. In general an amateur digital mode cannot have encryption (there are a few exceptions). A digital mode must have a published specification as well. PACTOR is not published to my knowledge.

The ARRL petitioned for an increase to the symbol rate on the HF bands almost a decade ago. The FCC never formally did anything with it.

It was a few years back, but at one point the FCC issued a 200+ kw license for a transmitter right at the top of the 20m band. Why? I have no clue. It isn't like the operator couldn't afford a commercial license.

The FCC barely does anything about interference coming from equipment that affects amateurs. I've had substantially more luck contacting manufacturers and constructors directly. Just google "solaredge RFI" if you want more info about this.

It took a commercial radio manufacturer years of professional lobbying to convince the FCC that the CB radio spectrum could in fact be with FM. The FCC is about 50 years behind on regulation for the CB radio. There is a huge amount of very valuable spectrum that could be used for citizen radio purposes with type accepted equipment very cheaply. But the FCC does not allow it.

The FCC approved DFS for Wi-Fi, but didn't actually specify what the equipment was supposed to do when it must mitigate interference. All the equipment I've seen just switches the AP to the first 5 ghz channel and leaves it there. Forever. Likewise the FCC approved a new 5 ghz band for WiFi and similar services and puts power limits on emissions, as they should. But none of the chosen channels have a power limit of something very low like 0dbmw or similar. I have neighbors who find it fit to run an AP on every single available channel in the WiFi spectrum. I would just like one I can use in my house comfortably without getting interference. If we're going to have all this spectrum, why not take one channel and put a very low power limit on it? That way residential customers could use it in their house knowing they aren't receiving interference or generating it.

The FCC regulation is almost always lagging behind reality for spectrum they aren't paid for. Cellular and stuff gets all the attention, since that is where the money is. The transition to ATSC from NTSC for broadcast television would be a good example. That happened quickly and without endless debate as to the merit of it.

The FCC regulations don't take "might as well" into consideration, they only prohibit "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning". So, ACTUAL encryption, not EFFECTIVE encryption, however you want to define that.

Since PACTOR is not "encryption" in the sense that the algorithm may be generally known but the secret key is not, it doesn't run afoul of the regulations. There's nothing in the regulations saying that the modulation or encoding used must be open or publicly available somehow. At best, it might be a gray area if the person/company providing it selectively decided who to sell it to.

And according to wikipedia: "Pactor modes other than level 1 (P1) are not open source,[14][15] but are publicly documented[16] and can be monitored and decoded easily over the air by third parties using free Raspberry Pi software ("PMON for Raspberry Pi")[17] or PMON utility on the modem itself.[18]"

All of THAT being said, I would certainly be in favor of a rule change that only allowed fully-published non-patented codecs on the amateur bands. That would of course wipe out all of the existing VHF/UHF digital modes since (nearly?) all of them use AMBE which must be licensed.