Rolling Stone Sued For Text Messaging Spam

from the a-text-message-gathers-no-moss dept

Thu, Nov 11th 2010 6:29pm — Mike Masnick

Rolling Stone publisher, Wenner Media, has been hit with a class action lawsuit over spam text messages that were used to aggressively promote Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Men's Journal. Of course, it's not clear that this is actually illegal. The lawsuit is based on a law that forbids the automatic dialing of marketing phone calls to mobile phones, but it's not clear if that actually applies to SMS messages as well.

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Filed Under: rolling stone, spam, text messages
Companies: wenner media

10 Comments

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out_of_the_blue, 11 Nov 2010 @ 7:05pm

Splitting hairs.
It's *marketing* to a *phone*.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Nov 2010 @ 7:05pm

text message spam is even worse than phone spam... I'm amazed if it isn't illegal, it should be because it costs people money to receive and you have no choice.
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James, 11 Nov 2010 @ 9:23pm

Whether its legal or not
Anyone who engages in spam, text, email, etc., should be shot.
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 11 Nov 2010 @ 11:35pm

Re: Whether its legal or not
thats far to kind a sentiment
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willbates (profile), 12 Nov 2010 @ 12:36am

Re: Whether its legal or not
It definitely should be illegal but in any case I have no idea why companies would do it, it's just annoying and makes consumers hate their brand!!
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2010 @ 4:48am

25c a text that I never asked for and do not want. YES, Should be illegal and I hope they lose the case against them!
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Richard Kulawiec, 12 Nov 2010 @ 4:58am

Re: Whether its legal or not
I don't know if you're serious or just venting, but I've actually constructed (elsewhere) a serious attempt at an argument that spamming should be punished by the death penalty. As you might guess, this isn't very popular with spammers, their associates, their supporters, their suppliers/consultants/vendors, etc.
What few people seem to grasp yet is that spammers are sociopathic monsters; that's why, as I've often said, there is no such thing as an ex-spammer. (Every now and then someone mistakenly claims to have spotted an example of one. It inevitably turns out that the spammer has just migrated to a different form of abuse -- see "Spamford Wallace" for the canonical case study.)
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Nov 2010 @ 7:05am

I want to sue the Republican and Democratic Parties for spamming me during election. They call you, email you, text you and make you numb watching television. I hate them. They suck.
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Sean T Henry (profile), 12 Nov 2010 @ 7:28am

Re:
If it costs you money to receive text messages GET A NEW PLAN. I have never been charged to receive txts even when on some of the phone card plans. If they charge you to receive the service sucks.
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Gene Cavanaugh, 12 Nov 2010 @ 9:41am

SMS and autodialing
If it doesn't, it should.
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