Cell-Phone Spam Is Now a Crime
An Arizona appellate court ruled Tuesday that a 1991 federal law's ban against using autodialers to call cell phones applies to sending e-mail text messages with unsolicited advertisements -- a technology not in vogue when the law was enacted.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge Court of Appeals panel upholds a trial judge's pretrial ruling in favor of a man who had sued a mortgage company in 2001 after it sent two unsolicited text messages to his cell phone. Rodney L. Joffe claimed that the calls by Acacia Mortgage violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The Court of Appeals rejected Acacia's argument that the 1991 law was an infringement on the company's First Amendment rights to free speech. The law's prohibition on use of autodialers to call cell phones was a narrowly drawn restriction that did not hinge on content, the ruling said.
