Verizon Rejects NARAL Pro-Choice America's Text Messaging Program

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 01 Oct 2007 - 1:00 PST

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Verizon Wireless recently denied a request by NARAL Pro-Choice America to use the company's mobile network for a new text messaging program, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from NARAL Pro-Choice America. One of the group's recent messages said, "End Bush's global gag rule against birth control for world's poorest women! Call Congress. (202) 224-3121. Thnx! Naral Text4Choice" (Liptak, New York Times, 9/27).

According to the Wall Street Journal, similar text messaging programs are used by other groups and companies to distribute short text messages for marketing and other purposes. Verizon Wireless -- which is owned by Verizon Communications and the United Kingdom-based Vodafone Group -- said that the messages that NARAL Pro-Choice America requested sending are "highly controversial" and that the company's "code of content" prohibited such messages (Searcey, Wall Street Journal, 9/27). The company said that it does not accept programs from any group "that seeks to promote an agenda or distribute content that, in its discretion, may be seen as controversial or unsavory to any of our users" (New York Times, 9/27).

Reaction
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless, said the topic of abortion is prohibited from mass distribution based on the company's code of content. The code "was initially developed at a time before text messaging became a mass-market phenomenon," Nelson said, adding that the company has "been reviewing that code for the last couple of months as text messaging and other multimedia services have become much more mainstream in American communications" (AP/San Jose Mercury News, 9/26).

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said the company's decision interferes with political speech and activism. "No company should be allowed to censor the message we want to send to people who have asked us to send it to them," Keenan said, adding, "Regardless of people's political views, Verizon customers should decide what action to take on their phones. Why does Verizon get to make that choice for them?"

Some legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. According to the Times, the laws prohibiting common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on regular phone lines do not apply to text messages (New York Times, 9/27).

NPR's "Morning Edition" on Thursday reported on the text messaging program (Montagne, "Morning Edition," NPR, 9/27). Audio of the segment is available online.

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