Verizon sues SMS spammers
Despite there currently being no US laws regarding SMS spam.
US mobile provider Verizon Wireless has filed a lawsuit against 51
individuals who, it alleges, sent over 4.7 million unsolicited commercial
SMS messages to its subscribers.
Verizon claims that the defendants sent unsolicited SMS advertisements
(featuring the usual roll call of products: Ephedra, mortgages, sexual
enhancement pills, and so on) to its subscribers and is seeking both
damages and an injunction against the defendants.
Before filing its suit Verizon first had to overcome the small hurdle of
there currently being no US laws regarding SMS spam. Although the Federal
Communications Commission was instructed by the CAN-SPAM Act to create laws
to protect users against unwanted messages on mobile devices, the laws will
not be in place until September 2004. As a result, Verizon has had to
resort to filing its suit under the somewhat antiquated 1991 Telephone
Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), on the grounds that the software used for
SMS spamming can be considered an (illegal) 'automatic telephone dialling
system'.
18 August 2004
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