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Unsolicited Text Messages as Bad as Phone Calls, Court Says

by Terrence O'Brien on June 24, 2009 at 11:27 AM

Court Says Texts Same as Voice Calls Under Law

Let's hope that the Simon & Schuster or marketing firm ipsh! employee who, six years ago, decided to send out thousands of unsolicited text messages reading, "the next call you take may be your last," has lost their job. If they haven't yet, then they probably will soon (assuming Simon & Schuster is forced to cough up the roughly $90 million in fines and payouts associated with the class action lawsuit it's facing for the ill-advised Stephen King promo).

In 2003, to promote the then new Stephen King novel, 'Cell,' the publisher used a list of 100,000 phone numbers collected by a third party, not involved in the case, to send the offending text message. One of the text's recipients, Laci Satterfield, filed suit on behalf of herself and 60,000 others, claiming the company violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The act prohibits automatic telephone dialing systems from making calls to non-consensual cell phone owners.


But before the courts could decide whether or not the company should hand out the $500-to-$1,500 per person awards, one issue had to be settled. Is a text message a phone call? As an answer, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco handed down a decision, thus paving the way for the TCPA to be applied to text spammers. The decision states that the FCC ban clearly "encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers." Now, the case will go back to the lower courts to decide if the method used by Simon & Schuster qualifies as an "automatic telephone dialing system."

This case is extremely important because it could potentially set strict limits on SMS-based marketing. Being bombarded by advertisements enough in all other aspects of life as it is, we're all for it. [From: mocoNews]

Tags: law, marketing, sms, spam, stephen king, StephenKing, TCPA, telemarketing, telephone consumer protection act, TelephoneConsumerProtectionAct, texting, top

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