T-Mobile Facing Lawsuit Over Text Message Censorship 181
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."
Not common carrier (Score:2, Informative)
Cell companies can block whatever they want. (Unless the law has recently changed and I didn't know about it.)
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Re:Do u want V1aGra and pr0n txt msgs? (Score:3, Informative)
In Poland, I get daily text messages saying that I won a million or a car, or whatever. For me, this is spam and advertisements that I do not want. I pay for my mobile phone and for every text message I send, call I make and whatnot, but the carrier still insists on sending me spam messages which annoy me. On a bad day it can get to five texts of spam and I can't simply ignore my phone thinking "nah, this is probably just spam" without checking it if it is important.
Re:Q&A (Score:1, Informative)
Its called 'Venue.'
Usually it involves where the two parties do business at, not the recipients of the texts in CA. If a recipient of a text is the one suing, then this could be a Venue for a CA court.
Re:Well they aren't spam (Score:5, Informative)
"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:Block All Marketing Texts (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Block All Marketing Texts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well they aren't spam (Score:5, Informative)
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:Why would they do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Censorship is the result of something being censored. It does not matter if it is a government, Microsoft or a cell phone company doing the censoring. It is still censorship.
Re:Why would they do this? (Score:3, Informative)
Websters does not have the word government anywhere in the definition of censorship or censor. Of course a private company can censor. Broadcast television does it all the time.
The only test for censorship in this case is: 'Did they block a message based ONLY on the content of the message?' If the answer is yes, then it is censorship. That doesn't make it illegal or wrong, it just makes it fit the definition.
Re:Q&A (Score:3, Informative)
Re:T-Mobile not part of gov't, so it's not censors (Score:4, Informative)
The definition of the word "censorship" says nothing about the Government. Just because those text messages don't get first amendment protection here doesn't mean they're not being censored.
Re:T-Mobile not part of gov't, so it's not censors (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Opt-in? Hahahaha! (Score:4, Informative)
He wasn't confusing it. He's saying the other end will claim you opted-in.
C//
Don't Trust EZ Texting (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [commlawblog.com]
EZ Texting makes sure to send their messages from obfuscated domains [godaddy.com] with "private" registration information [godaddy.com] (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:Well they are private (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Do u want V1aGra and pr0n txt msgs? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure how long ago that actually was.
I've been with tmobile for a few years and as long as I remember there has been the ability to block messages.
I just looked to confirm and it's actually more fine grained now. Email, Text, Picture, Content Downloads....or just block them all.
Every carrier I have been with also charged for incoming texts, but I also admit I have only used three in my lifetime. Myself, I rarely use text messages and active discourage anyone from sending me a message. It's far more economical to operate without a plan then to commit to even a base plan for any period of time.
My experience with their phone support is also completely backwards from yours. I have never once encountered a situation in which they acted as you described. Now ATT I have had very similar experiences with.
Example (Score:5, Informative)
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:Block All Marketing Texts (Score:1, Informative)
Not that it helps you now, but T-Mobile offers message blocking today. In the past, they didn't have a way to separate voicemail (which uses SMS to trigger the voicemail notification) and possibly other important SMS based services, from your typical user-facing text messages. Fortunately, that's changed.
Re:Why would they do this? (Score:1, Informative)
All carriers choose which shortcodes they run through their networks. This action by T-Mobile might seem different, because they originally allowed EZ, and then removed them, but they test every service before it's allowed to go live. It's never worked like censorship-free open access to all comers.
The point is that this is not a change. Slashdot apparently just noticed, but all carriers have always regulated shortcode services very closely. These are businesses that pay for access to customers through shortcodes and are beholden to financial contracts with penalties and all kinds of fun stuff. The way it is run today could not be further from common-carrier and with respect to services, T-Mobile and other carriers can very easily held liable for illegal services provided.
It might be common-carrier when referring to messages between users, but not with shortcodes.
Re:Well they aren't spam (Score:4, Informative)
Really? That's why it was broken up? It was too socialist? Wow. Thanks for that informative info Mr. AC. And here I was thinking because they were horribly abusing their monopoly power. Why, I guess I didn't realize that and I really should have loved having to pay rent on every phone in my house because you weren't allowed to own your own phone. You had to rent ALL your equipment from them.