Verizon Reverses Decision To Reject NARAL Pro-Choice America's Text Messaging Program

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 01 Oct 2007 - 5:00 PDT

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Verizon Wireless on Thursday announced that has reversed a recent decision to reject 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 (Liptak, New York Times, 9/28). 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."

Similar programs are used by other groups and companies to distribute short text messages for marketing and other purposes. Verizon -- which is owned by Verizon Communications and the United Kingdom-based Vodafone Group -- had 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. The company had 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" (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 9/27).

Verizon Comments, Reaction
"The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect," Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless, said in a statement Thursday, adding that the previous decision to reject NARAL Pro-Choice America's request was an "isolated incident." Nelson said the policy was developed before other protections, including spam filters, were able to block unwanted messages. The policy was "designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult material sent to children," he said.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, on Thursday said, "The fight to defeat corporate censorship was won," adding that NARAL Pro-Choice America "would like to see Verizon make its new policy public." The company did not respond to requests for copies of the policy or offer an explanation for why it is withholding it, the Times reports (New York Times, 9/28).

Some legal experts have said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws prohibiting common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on regular phone lines do not apply to text messages (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 9/27). Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps said the incident shows the need for legislation that will ensure such discrimination is prohibited on Internet networks. "If someone has the technological power and the commercial incentive, they're going to try doing this," Copps said (Hart, Washington Post, 9/28).

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said, "Reports of Verizon's actions raise troubling questions about a network operator's ability to determine what its customers receive and from whom" (Vascellaro/Searcey, Wall Street Journal, 9/28). Dingell in a statement said, "I am particularly concerned by [Verizon's] ability and apparent willingness to interfere when customers choose to receive legitimate and legal communications from an organization" (Whitman, New York Post, 9/28). He added, "I ask Verizon to decisively state that it will no longer discriminate against any legal content its customers request from any organization" (Washington Post, 9/28).

Opinion Piece
Verizon's "ill-considered decision" to reject NARAL Pro-Choice America's request "breathed new life into the drive" for regulations that would bar Internet access providers from favoring or blocking legal content, a Los Angeles Times editorial says. According to the Times, the "rationale" Verizon "initially gave" should "alarm people across the political spectrum." By "demonstrating how much power network operators wield over speech," Verizon and other companies "strengthened the case for rules that keep the Internet free from their control or anyone else's," the editorial concludes (Los Angeles Times, 9/28).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation© 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.