Stephen King Horror Story: Simon & Schuster Text-Messaging Case Sent Back To Lower Court
Simon & Schuster, the book publishing company owned by CBS (NYSE: CBS) Corporation, may have to pay as much as $90 million in fines over a Stephen King book promo, according to a new appeals-court ruling. The case stems from a promotional campaign for Stephen King’s horror novel “The Cell” three years ago, when the publisher sent unsolicited text messages to thousands of users saying that the “next call you take may be your last.” It was a promo for the book. The class-action suit was brought by one of the users, Laci Satterfield, and with this new ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which overruled an earlier decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the case goes back to the trial court. That court will determine whether the equipment used to send these text messages should be considered an automated telephone dialing system. Updated: The appeal court opinion, embedded after the jump…
In its opinion, the appeals court judge said that the text message could be defined as a “call”, and hence was in violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automatic telephone dialing systems to make calls to cell phones unless the owners have consented, according to Mediapost. From the ruling: “The FCC has explicitly stated that the TCPA’s prohibition…‘encompasses both voice calls and text calls to wireless numbers including, for example, short message service (SMS) calls’...[W]e find that the FCC’s interpretation of the TCPA is reasonable, and therefore afford it deference to hold that a text message is a ‘call’ within the TCPA.”
The suit was brought on behalf of about 60,000 people, each of whom could receive a minimum of $500 and as much as $1,500 each, according to the law firm behind the lawsuit, meaning a total of as much as $90 million could be paid by S&S and the mobile marketing firm behind the campaign ipsh! (now owned by Omnicom).
As the story points out, this is the first time a federal appellate court has said that the telephone law applies to text messages, potentially creating some roadblocks for the mobile marketing companies.
Simon Schuster Text Spam Lawsuit
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Posted In: Advertising, Media & Publishing, Books, Companies, CBS, simon & schuster
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Comments (2)
Jun 26, 2009 9:20 AM
That a text message is a call is a bit tenuous, but that has been established in the past. This decision has a much larger problem. The court is saying that any computer capable of generating a list of random numbers (thus every computer, even your cell phone) is an auto dialer if it is sending out text messages. This is absurd, and it could cripple the legitimate participants in the mobile marketing industry.
Please see http://www.mobileac.org
Jun 26, 2009 9:23 AM
S&S didn’t follow MMA best practices and this is what happens. But that is not the problem here. The court is saying that any computer capable of generating a list of random numbers (thus every computer, even your cell phone) is an auto dialer if it is sending out text messages. This is absurd, and it could cripple the legitimate participants in the mobile marketing industry.
The industry is coming together to protect itself from this troubling interpretation of the law. Please see http://www.mobileac.org