FEC Decision Could Jump-Start SMS Political Ads

[amphibian]

http://www.wirelessweek.com/index.as...tory&industry=

FEC Decision Could Jump-Start SMS Political Ads

August 22, 2002
Newsbytes

A decision by federal election regulators to exempt text-based wireless ads from campaign disclosure rules has critics warning that consumers could find their mobile phones subject to a flood of political spam as campaign 2002 kicks into high gear.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) today approved a New Jersey technology firm's petition to waive disclosure rules for political ads delivered via SMS -- or "short messaging service." SMS is featured on a wide range of wireless devices, from digital mobile phones to Blackberries to two-way pagers.

Target Wireless of Fort Lee, N.J., joined by advertising industry groups and a Republican campaign committee, argued that current campaign disclosure rules would require political advertisers to use up too much of the limited amount of text -- 160 characters total -- available for individual SMS messages.

Disclosure exemptions have long been in place for advertising media that are limited to small numbers of text characters, such as bumper stickers, buttons, pens and pencils, skywriting, balloons and water towers. But Commissioner Danny Lee McDonald, the lone "no" vote in the FEC's 4-1 decision in favor of the SMS petition, said comparing cell phones to bumper stickers and water towers was something of a stretch, since wireless devices are a far more personal and private medium for most consumers.

"If you take a bumper sticker or button, those are things that are initiated by citizens (who wear them)," McDonald said. "With cell phones, the flow is the other way." At least one campaign disclosure advocate expressed concerns that an exemption assumes that all political messages delivered over SMS will be positive.

"It's hard enough with the ads already out there to figure out who's really paying for what, and if you drop (the disclosure requirement), I see mischief all over the place," said David Farber, a professor of computer science and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

"If we are wrong in our judgment and it's horribly abused, we can revisit this," said FEC Vice Chairman Karl J. Sandstrom, seeking to downplay concerns about the SMS waiver. The idea that a government regulation "should trump the medium to get out message, means that the government requirement trumps the message," said Sandstrom, who was sitting in for FEC Chairman David M. Mason

The compromise approach ultimately adopted by the FEC instructs political advertisers to include a phone number or Web site address at the end of the SMS message telling recipients where they can go to learn more about the ad's sponsor. The decision essentially exempts political ads from containing basic "paid for by" notices that otherwise would take up much of the space available in a single SMS message. The question remains whether there's a viable market for delivering campaign ads via SMS in the U.S.

SMS is hugely popular in other parts of the world but has been slow to catch on in the states. According to the Boston-based consulting firm Yankee Group, there were roughly 131 million cell phone subscribers in the United States by the end of 2001. And while a third of those users had SMS-enabled phones, only about 4.3 million actually used the service.

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[dakman33]

Great!! Now I have another way to get "spammed". I wonder if there is a way to not get put on this list. I also wonder how legal this is. If a customer does not have an SMS package in their rate plan, they will get a charge on their bill for the SMS that they don't even want. This is bad. Telemarketers have even started calling my cell phone.