10DLC Regulation - SMS Text Message Blocking - Various related laws

Speakers' Corner
1

If your SIP provider has blocked your ability to send and/or receive SMS text messages, read on…

The 10DLC “the campaign registry” is a for profit company located in Virginia. They are advising SIP providers to block SMS Texting on 10DLC (ten digit long codes) otherwise known as a phone numbers.

Doing a search on google, I found one federal law and several state laws prohibiting providers from blocking messaging. This is the result of a google search so its obviously not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

Federal 18 U.S. Code § 1362

…willfully or maliciously obstructs, hinders, or delays the transmission of any communication over any such line, or system, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Alabama Criminal Code 13A-10-16

… Knowingly and intentionally interferes with the transmission or reception of any data, communication, message…

California Penal Code PEN § 591

A person who unlawfully and maliciously takes down, removes, injures, disconnects, cuts, or obstructs a line of telegraph, telephone

Colorado Revised Statutes 18-9-306.5

A person commits obstruction of telephone or telegraph service if the person knowingly prevents, obstructs, or delays, by any means whatsoever, the sending, transmission, conveyance, or delivery in this state of any message, communication, or report by or through any telegraph or telephone line, wire, cable, or other facility or any cordless, wireless, electronic, mechanical, or other device.

Idaho Title 18-6810.

… (1) Any person who intentionally takes down, removes, injures or obstructs in any manner any telecommunication line or, any part thereof, or appurtenances or apparatus connected therewith, or severs any wire thereof or who intentionally takes, withholds, takes down, removes, injures or obstructs any telephone instrument or other instrument that is used or could be used to facilitate the transmission of messages, signals, facsimiles, video images or other communication by means of telephone, telegraph, cable, …

Illinois 720 § 5/16-18

… prevents, obstructs or delays by any means or contrivance whatsoever, the sending, transmission, conveyance or delivery in this State of any message, communication or report by or through any telegraph or telephone line, wire or cable; or

Kentucky 438.210

Any person who willfully and maliciously prevents, obstructs or delays the sending,

transmission, conveyance or delivery in this state of any message, communication…

Louisiana RS 14:73.11

… It shall be unlawful for any person to willfully or maliciously injure, destroy, obstruct, hinder, delay the transmission of, or interfere with any of the following communications…

… communication that is controlled by any domestic or foreign corporation, limited liability company, or other legal entity created for the purpose of or engaged in generating, transmitting, providing, and distributing utilities or utility services to the public…

Maine TITLE 17-A §758

… A person is guilty of obstructing the report of a crime or injury if that person intentionally, knowingly or recklessly disconnects, damages, disables, removes or uses physical force or intimidation to block access to a telephone, radio or other electronic communication…

Massachusetts Part IV Title I Chapter 272 Section 99

… willfully commits an interception, attempts to commit an interception, or procures any other person to commit an interception or to attempt to commit an interception of any wire or oral communication…

Michigan MCL - Section 750.540

…A person shall not willfully and maliciously prevent, obstruct, or delay by any means the sending, conveyance, or delivery of any authorized communication, by or through any telegraph or telephone line, cable, wire, or any electronic medium of communication, including the internet or a computer, computer program, computer system, or computer network…

Minnesota 609.4975

…wire, oral, or electronic communication, and with intent to obstruct, impede, or prevent interception, gives notice or attempts to give notice of the possible interception to a person, may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

Mississippi Code § 97-45-2

…Every person who shall knowingly and willfully endeavor, by means of bribery, force or intimidation, to obstruct, delay or prevent the communication of information to any agent or employee of the Office of the Attorney General or who injures another person for the purpose of preventing the communication of such information or an account of the giving of such information relevant to an investigation under this section shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, shall be punished by a fine of not more than Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) or by imprisonment for not more than five (5) years, or by both such fine and imprisonment….

Missouri 542.402

…For an operator of a switchboard, or an officer, employee, or agent of any communication common carrier, whose facilities are used in the transmission of a wire communication, to intercept, disclose, or use that communication in the normal course of his employment while engaged in any activity which is a necessary incident to the rendition of his service or to the protection of the rights or property of the carrier of such communication, however, communication common carriers shall not utilize service observing or random monitoring except for mechanical or service quality control checks…

Montana 45-6-105

…A person commits the offense of criminal destruction of or tampering with a communication device if the person purposely or knowingly destroys or tampers with a telephone or other communication device to obstruct, prevent, or interfere with:…

Nevada NRS 707.900

… Penalty for interception, interruption or delay of message sent over telephone line. Every person who shall intercept, read or in any manner interrupt or delay the sending of a message over any telephone line…

New Hampshire Rev. Stat. § 642:10

… person shall be guilty of an offense under this section who disconnects, damages, disables, removes, or uses physical force or intimidation to block access to any telephone, radio, or other electronic communication device with a purpose to obstruct, prevent, or interfere…

New Mexico Statutes Section 30-12-1

…preventing, obstructing or delaying the sending, transmitting, conveying or delivering in this state of any message, communication…

Tennessee

Texas PENAL § 42.062

An individual commits an offense if the individual knowingly prevents or interferes with another individual’s ability to place an emergency call or to request assistance, including a request for assistance using an electronic communications device, in an emergency from a law enforcement agency, medical facility, or other agency or entity the primary purpose of which is to provide for the safety of individuals.

Utah 76-6-108

… attempts to prohibit or interrupt, or prohibits or interrupts, another person’s use of a communication device…

Virginia § 18.2-164

Willfully or maliciously prevent, obstruct, or delay by any means or contrivance whatsoever the sending, conveyance, or delivery in the Commonwealth of any authorized communication by or through any telephone or telegraph line, wire, cable, or wireless transmission device under the control of any telephone or telegraph company doing business in the Commonwealth

Washington 76-6-108

… An actor commits damage to or interruption of a communication device if the actor attempts to prohibit or interrupt, or prohibits or interrupts, another person’s use of a communication device…

West Virginia §61-5-17

…No person, with the intent to purposefully deprive another person of emergency services, may interfere with or prevent another person from making an emergency communication, which a reasonable person would consider necessary under the circumstances, to law-enforcement, fire, or emergency medical services personnel…

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It’s annoying. It took me over a year to figure out how to overcome the 10DLC registration with Twilio. Basically the secret was in figuring out what the 10DLC authority wanted to hear and see. First, I had to add an opt-in form on my company website. Then I had to register my company so that they could verify that it was a legitimate organization.

Once that was approved, I had to register a campaign detailing what it was I intended to use texting for. My description was that my company was planning on utilizing

SMS for routine communications between our office and existing or prospective customers. We will be using SMS for Customer support and answering consumer concerns about products and services. There is no intention of using SMS for any form of mass marketing at this time.

I then had to provide at least 3 sample messages, and all of them included the registered company name, and a note to reply with “STOP” to no longer receive messages.

My understanding is that the only reason the campaign would be revoked, is if someone complained, and that wouldn’t be very likely if all you are using it for is standard person to person communication, like you would with a cell phone.

Ultimately, you are perfectly free to send SMS, you just have to prove you aren’t going to abuse the privilege like so many people did (and still do) with email, making it’s reliability and utility more difficult to justify. I see it as no different than learning how to create the code to send the message in the first place.

3

Thank you! as has been said “your pragma just run over my dogma”

4

Your time is worth something.

You could have done a quicker solution and possibly at a lower cost.

Have your attorney draft a fancy letter explaining how the SIP provider is breaking the law by blocking your texts and threaten legal action if they don’t unblock you.

The cost analysis makes this easy.

The SIP provider can unblock you for free (VS) the SIP provider enduring legal costs.

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All you would have to do to get your SIP provider to break the law in all 50 states is to send a SMS to a recipient in each of the 50 states and let the SIP provider reject all of them.

BINGO! The SIP provider is caught in their own trap!

7

Have you done that? @bduehn solution was for Twilio

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I have not sent a Text to all 50 states. I was just illustrating how easily the SIP providers are exposing themselves.

Many business owners go through great efforts to avoid legal trouble. The SIP providers are running straight for trouble on this one. Its like blind sheep (to coin a popular expression).

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Won 't disagree but , pretty sure “The SIP providers” are also in the Venn diagram of “business owners”

We have here a possibly working solution for Twilio that seems to frame the generic steps that worked

10

SIP providers are indeed in the Venn diagram of “business owners” which means when faced with costly legal action, they will choose the “free” option of no longer blocking.

SIP providers need to be very careful to not block law firms or companies that might employ their own attorney.

11

No argument here, but perhaps you should move your post from here “off-topic” to

12

18 U.S. Code § 1362 specifically protects communications operated or controlled by the U.S. government

Sir, are you the government?

Conflict Preemption

If a state law directly contradicts an FCC rule or makes it impossible to comply with both, the FCC’s rule wins.

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What is fantastic about the Federal law is this.

If you try to send a text message to any federal government employee’s government phone equipment and the message is blocked by the SIP provider…

Ooopsie!!!

14

Interesting you think the providers are breaking the law when complying to the new regulations set forth by the TCPA, FCC and CTIA. You are probably unaware that even if the providers still allowed sending from unregistered numbers, the mobile carriers won’t accept incoming messages from an unregistered 10DLC number.

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Not to be Debbie downer here but the SIP providers are not the ones blocking the messages. It’s the mobile carriers who refuse to accept messages that are not linked to a campaign. Those same mobile providers were directed by the FCC to put a system in place for legit traffic to register their numbers hence The Campaign Registry was born to be the company the mobile carriers picked.

The SIP carrier industry have been fighting this ridiculous system that doesn’t work but we are all at the mercy of the mobile carriers. They will not accept and messages from a non wireless number that is not linked to a campaign anymore.

Even worse is The Campaign Registry is owned by Tata Communications from India. So now all messaging from non wireless numbers are controlled by a foreign owned entity. The whole thing is a mess but until the FCC steps in here and rights the wrong created by the Mobile carriers nothing can change as they control all of this.

For example T-Mobile requires every text message sent to them to flow through Peerless/Infobip. Verizon, ATT and the other smaller regionals all use Syniverse and Syniverse is the company holding up approvals on campaigns as they do not have enough staff and they are 6-8 weeks to review a campaign. The whole system is a mess.

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My understanding, and I could be wrong/mis-informed here… is that through a twist of how federal law is written, the FCC actually has no jurisdiction over texting and so have kicked the can to the mobile carriers/industry to manage the situation on their own. Of course they have zero interest in making 10DLC messaging easy because it doesn’t benefit them and because their view is “use a cell phone.”

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The FCC does have jurisdiction over messaging (SMS/MMS) and they enforce it through the Telephone Consumers Protection Act. Much like how the FCC told the telecom carriers to come up with a solution for robocalling/fraud calls (thus STIR/SHAKEN and RMDB). The FCC also told the mobile carriers to come up with a way to combat text messaging SPAM and fraud messages.

10DLC is no different than Short Codes. Every business wanting to use Short Codes for mass messaging (or even Toll Free) had to register their campaigns to use Short Codes. Now we have to do it with Long Codes.

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@davidpzk In principle, I completely agree with you. It took me weeks of back-and-forth with Twilio’s 10DLC authorities, four or five rejections and countless hours re-drafting the campaign request. This should not have been that confounded difficult.

Unfortunately, this process has been made necessary by the very legal process you are advocating we employ against the carriers, who typically have far more expensive lawyers than most of us could afford. In this case, the devil is in interpretation of the law, not the law itself. We might see 10DLC rules as being a hindrance to electronic communication, but it just takes a judge or jury to be convinced that without them, their children or grandchildren are at risk from text messaging scammers. Now you’ve wasted your time and the money you spent on an attorney. If you want to keep pursuing it, you could appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, where if you can’t convince at least 5 justices, you could lose the whole enchilada.

In my experience, it’s rarely a good idea to resort to lawfare if there is a way around or through the rules. I think I’d rather discuss the nuances with my state and federal representatives to reclassify what constitutes a2p vs p2p communications, so we are only talking about restricting SMS marketing, not routine communications with customers, vendors, colleagues and friends.

In the meantime, there is a workable solution that actually would be far cheaper and less time consuming than hiring a lawyer. I can’t take full credit for it. I was talking with a Net2Phone tech about another issue with a customer, and the conversation rolled around to my frustration with getting through the 10DLC process (how it got there from a discussion about a customers’ auto attendant, I have no clue.) He told me what Net2Phone recommends to their customers, and that pointed me in the right direction.

I simply share my process here to save someone else the same aggravation I went through.

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19

I’m going to go out on a limb and state some opinions and make some future predictions.

1 - mobile cell phone companies (Verizon, TMoble, ATT) have multiple staff attorneys that advise their technical team that blocking of communication is illegal therefore mobile cell phone companies wont actively participate in blocking anyone.

2 - SIP providers are smaller operations that may not have attorneys on staff to advise their technical crew. Or if the SIP providers do have one or more attorneys on staff, that attorney is not aware that the technical team is blocking traffic.

3 - The Campaign Registry, owned by Tata Communications started a marketing campaign targeting easy to influence SIP providers technical staff. Thereafter the SIP provider willfully agrees to block messaging unless the customer sends business and revenue in the direction of The Campaign Registry.

4 - For the larger SIP providers that have an attorney on staff, in light of this post and other information they will consult with their corporate attorney, and thereafter the technical team will be instructed to cease blocking traffic.

5 - Eventually the smaller SIP providers will hear the larger providers are no longer blocking traffic and will do the same.

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The FCC mandated that the mobile carriers (Verizon, TMobile, ATT) provide a solution to combat SPAM/fraud spam messages. These same lawyers at these carriers you say are going to advise them they can’t block messages…they are the ones that help shape 10DLC regulations. Why would these same lawyers back track on themselves?

It might be wise to educate yourself on how this is all being done. There’s almost five years of rulings, orders and guidelines available for review.

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