T-Mobile Facing Lawsuit Over Text Message Censorship

Tootech writes with this quote from Wired: "A mobile-marketing company claimed Friday it would go out of business unless a federal judge orders T-Mobile to stop blocking its text-messaging service, the first case testing whether wireless providers can block text messages they don't like. EZ Texting claims T-Mobile blocked the company from sending text messages for all of its clients after learning that legalmarijuanadispensary.com, an EZ Texting client, was using its service to send texts about legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. 'T-Mobile subjectively did not approve of one of the thousands of lawful businesses and non-profits served by EZ Texting,' according to New York federal lawsuit."

Comments

Block All Marketing Texts

[cob666]

I'm all for shutting down marketing firms that depend solely on text messages. In the US, we pay for each text message that we receive (or it counts towards a monthly allotment). Imagine if your ISP allowed only 100 emails per month, unsolicited email would not be tolerated.

Re:Block All Marketing Texts

[demonlapin]

Allow me to present...

The US Mobile Market in a Nutshell:
There are four nationwide networks, owned by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. (Various MVNOs and regional carriers as well, but they're not relevant to this discussion.)

Sprint and Verizon use CDMA, but do not use a UICC or other SIM-equivalent. They will not activate each other's phones. If you want to be on their network, you have to buy their phone. AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, but their 3G frequencies are different, so you can only get EDGE speeds on a phone not made for that network. If you want a modern phone, you have to buy one specifically for one carrier. Furthermore, only T-Mobile offers a discount if you bring your own phone. As a result, Americans are always under contract, because it makes no sense not to take the new phone every other year.

As a result of the decision long ago to have mobile phones get numbers in the area code in which they are physically located, rather than a separate one for mobiles only, the person with a mobile phone pays for incoming and outgoing phone calls. (There's no easy way to know for certain that a given phone number is mobile vs landline, and nearly all Americans have had unmetered local calls for ages.) Minutes are minutes, and it doesn't matter who called whom. While this is a different decision from the European model, there is some reasonable logic - the benefit of being mobile accrues to the person with the mobile phone, so they should pay for it.

All the systems include caller ID, so there's also an opportunity to reject the call and not be charged. Furthermore, all numbers in the country are considered the same - calling a landline, a mobile, a mobile on another network - all charged out of your minutes. VOIP providers follow this same model; you pay a per-minute fee for calls, but the fee is the same regardless of what kind of number you are calling. So the benefit is that American mobile service, while expensive and cumbersome due to the one-carrier-per-phone situation, works exactly as if you were at home when traveling. No roaming fees, even if you travel thousands of miles, as long as you're still in the US.

Following the same logic, we pay to send and receive SMS. This is unconscionable, since you can't decline an SMS from an unfamiliar number, but the FCC is a creature of its regulatees, and so it does nothing. If you do find out someone does not have an unlimited SMS plan, you could easily empty their prepaid account or give them a thousands-of-dollars bill on a postpaid, just by sending them texts all day and night. The only solution is to get an unlimited plan or tell your carrier to reject all SMS.

Why would they do this?

[metrix007]

Surely this action would remove their common carrier status? Now that they have demonstrated they have the capability to censor content, they can assume responsibility for other content that they allow through?

Also, for those saying it is not censorship because it is not the government....no. Just no.

Opt-in? Hahahaha!

[tomhudson]

They all claim to be opt-in.

Try to get removed, and they don't.

Then, since you contacted them to get off their spam list, they now have a "previous relationship" with you.

Now if they had to pay every recipient - even a penny - spam would almost disappear. So don't tax email or spam - just make it a micro-transaction from one party to the other, and allow for me to white-list people who can send me stuff for free, and blacklist others who will have to pay a buck.

Re:Well they aren't spam

[Smallpond]

"Mobile phone users only receive text messages from EZ Texting’s customers upon request."

You text a request and it sends you a response, that's how EZ Text works. But don't read the article or anything.

Re:Well they aren't spam

[tomhudson]

As I pointed out elsewhere, there is no requirement that TMobile make their sms gateway available to any non-subscriber, and that includes short-code services.

Also, there is no requirement that TMobile actually deliver *any* sms message - read your contract. the big print giveth, and the small print taketh away.

Re:T-Mobile not part of gov't, so it's not censors

[WillDraven]

Where in the hell did you people get the idea that "if it's not a government doing it, it's not censorship." It may not be illegal or constitutionally prohibited censorship, but if anybody stops you from communicating anything anywhere, it is censorship. You can argue whether it is legal, ethical, necessary, etc., but it is still censorship.

Don't Trust EZ Texting

[Guppy06]

Run by Shane Neman, who also runs "Club Texting," both companies are known for sending out unsolicited text spam, which is illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (because the recipient has to pay to receive the message). When not avoiding disclosure of legal liabilities to their customers, they're quietly lobbying the FCC to get the same odious protections Congress gave junk faxers.

http://www.commlawblog.com/tags/club-texting/

EZ Texting makes sure to send their messages from obfuscated domains with "private" registration information (spammers apparently don't like being spammed, or being served lawsuits).

I doubt this is less about the content of the advertising and more about T-Mobile responding to customer complaints and attempting to cut off an unlawful advertiser who's trespassing on their networks. A spammer is a spammer is a spammer.

Re:Don't Trust EZ Texting

[JDS13]

In that case, T-Mobile should have notified EZ Texting that the shutdown was because of complaints about unsolicited texts, which are a violation of their terms of service and of Federal law. I'm sure there have been complaints about EZ Texting - I'm a T-Mobile customer and have called them to complain about unsolicited texts. I've also filed 1088's with the FCC.

Blocking a spammer wouldn't create this lawsuit or publicity.

Re:Well they are private

[TheGratefulNet]

but it wasn't spam.

no one is against actual spam filtering. but this was request/response, and that's not spam.

from TFA:

EZ Texting offers a short code service, which works like this: A church could send its schedule to a cell phone user who texted "CHURCH" to 313131. Mobile phone users only receive text messages from EZ Texting's customers upon request. Each of its clients gets their own special word. A party supplier might get "PARTY."

this isn't spam, its request/response.

to block that is just plain wrong.

Example

[tomhudson]

"You may have won $5,000.00. Text BUZZ420 to find out!"

Sucker texts BUZZ420, gets the "Sorry you didn't win, btw did you know that yadda yadda yadda."

He gets the spam after sending the short code. They will claim a pre-existing relationship from some email he may or may not have clicked on 5 years ago from some other place that included crap about sending offers from their "partners".

Re:Well they are private

[ducomputergeek]

If we could get the courts to send CDMA take down notices, I think a lot of Verizon and Sprint customers would be pissed and AT&T would be shitting gold bricks....