When a suit was filed against T-Mobile for
allegedly censoring text messages last week, we were reminded yet again that
text messages are not protected by the law in the same way that phone calls
are.
The suit was filed by EZ Texting, a company that provides bulk text messaging services that companies and organizations use to send text messages to customers, regardless of the customers' wireless providers. One of these organizations, legalmarijuanamaps.com (also known as weedmaps.com,) had its text messages blocked by T-Mobile. I don't know if someone at T-Mobile saw content either in the messages or the weedmaps.com web site and assumed the company is abetting illegal activity, or if T-Mobile is fundamentally against medical marijuana, but the 'why' isn't the important part of the story. The pressing issue is the fact that voice communications laws, established in the Federal Communications Act of 1934, do not extend to text, or data messaging. The law is in need of updating, but the FCC has yet to address the need (in spite of multiple requests).
As mentioned in a previous post, Verizon committed a similar act of censorship when it blocked NARAL, a pro-choice organization, from sending messages on its network.
Speak up for your rights and let policy makers know that text messaging should be covered under the same law as voice calling. Public Knowledge has made it easy for you to file a comment with the FCC.
Updated September 24, 2010: CNet reports that T-Mobile blocked the WeedMaps messages due to an administrative oversight -- EZ Texting is supposed to get prior approval for all marketing campaigns, and failed to do so for the WeedMaps messages.