Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless spam draws regulators' wrath

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 15:06:30 -0400

Wireless spam draws regulators' wrath

By Declan McCullagh 
CNET News.com

August 4, 2004

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday voted to
outlaw spam sent to mobile devices, but warned that unsolicited
text messages would not be covered by the ban. 

By a 5-0 vote, the FCC said that commercial e-mail messages to
cell phones or handheld computers would not be permitted unless
the recipient had asked to receive the correspondence in advance. 

But the FCC's decision not to restrict unsolicited text messages sent
through mechanisms like SMS, which stands for short message service,
creates a potentially huge regulatory loophole affecting tens of
millions
of Americans. Wireless providers often charge a few pennies per text
message received. 

Verizon Wireless subscribers exchanged 2.3 billion text messages last
quarter, up from 2.1 billion during the previous quarter. Cingular
Wireless
reported 1.4 billion text messages were sent during its last quarter. 

Under the Can-Spam Act, 
(See http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:s.00877:) the FCC
had until late August to publish regulations prohibiting "mobile service
commercial messages unless the subscriber has provided express prior
authorization to the sender," a broad definition that seems to include
text messages. But the law also gave the FCC the authority to shrink
that definition when necessary to address "unique technical aspects" of
different forms of wireless communications. 

The FCC's rules permit mobile providers to register their Internet
domain
names in a master database that spammers are supposed to honor. That
database will include only domain names like attwireless.com and
t-mobileusa.com, and not individual e-mail addresses of subscribers. 

"Spam has become the plague of the information age," FCC Chairman
Michael Powell said at Wednesday's public meeting. "It truly frustrates,
if not destroys, the powerful experience that some of the new
technologies
can provide." 

Noncommercial messages sent by politicians, nonprofit groups or
charities
are not covered by the Can-Spam Act or the FCC's forthcoming rules.
While
anyone violating those rules by sending spam to a mobile device can be
sued
civilly by the Federal Trade Commission, it's not clear how spammers
using
text messages could be punished. 

CNET News.com's Ben Charny contributed to this report 
 http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5296649.html

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