The Fight Over Right to Political Texting U.S. Firm Blocks Messages About Abortion

By Adam Liptak

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro- Choice America, a U.S. abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

The other leading American wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.

Text messaging is a growing political tool in the United States and a dominant one around the world, and such sign-up programs are used by many political candidates and advocacy groups to send updates to supporters.

But legal experts say private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.

The dispute over the Naral messages is a skirmish in the larger battle over the question of “Net neutrality” – whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers.

“This is right at the heart of the problem,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan law school, referring to the treatment of text messages. “The fact that wireless companies can choose to discriminate is very troubling.”

In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the two largest U.S. wireless carriers, told Naral 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.” Naral provided copies of its communications with Verizon to The New York Times.

Nancy Keenan, president of the group, said Verizon’s decision interfered 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. “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?”

A spokesman for Verizon said the decision turned on the subject matter of the messages and not on Naral’s position on abortion.

“Our internal policy is in fact neutral on the position,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey Nelson. “It is the topic itself” – abortion – “that has been on our list.”

Nelson suggested that Verizon might be rethinking its position. “As text messaging and multimedia services become more and more mainstream,” he said, “we are continuing to review our content standards.” The review will be made, he said, “with an eye toward making more information available across ideological and political views.”

Naral provided an example of a recent text message that it has sent to supporters: “End Bush’s global gag rule against birth control for world’s poorest women! Call Congress. (202) 224-3121. Thnx! NARAL Text4Choice.”

Messages urging political action are generally thought to be at the heart of what the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects. But the First Amendment limits government power, not that of private companies like Verizon.

In rejecting the Naral program, Verizon appeared to be acting against its economic interests. It would have received a small fee to set up the program and additional fees for messages sent and received.

Texting has proved to be an extraordinarily effective political tool. According to a study released this month by researchers at Princeton and the University of Michigan, young people who received text messages reminding them to vote in the November 2006 were more likely to go to the polls. The cost per vote generated, the study said, was much smaller than other sorts of get-out-the-vote efforts.

Several of the leading Democratic presidential candidates have used texting, as have such groups as Save Darfur, Amnesty International and the Republican National Committee. But most of the candidates and advocacy groups that use text message programs are liberal, which may reflect the demographics of the technology’s users and developers. A spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee, which is in some ways Naral’s anti-abortion counterpart, said, for instance, that it had not engaged in text messaging.

Around the world, the phenomenon is even bigger.

“Even as dramatic as the adoption of text messaging for political communication has been in the United States, we’ve been quite slow compared to the rest of the world,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. “It’s important in political campaigns and political protests, and it has affected the outcomes of elections.”

Timothy Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University, said it was possible to find analogies to Verizon’s decision abroad. “Another entity that controls mass text messages is the Chinese government,” Wu said.

Jed Alpert, chief executive of Mobile Commons, which says it is the largest provider of mobile services to political and advocacy groups, including Naral, said he had never seen a decision like Verizon’s.

“This is something we haven’t encountered before, that is very surprising and that we’re concerned about,” Alpert said.

Wu pointed to a historical analogy. In the 19th century, he said, Western Union, the telegraph company, engaged in discrimination, based on the political views of people who sought to send telegrams. “One of the eventual reactions was the common carrier rule,” Wu said, which required telegraph and then phone companies to accept communications from all speakers on all topics.

Some scholars said such a rule was not needed for text messages because market competition was sufficient to ensure robust political debate.

“Instead of having the government get in the game of regulating who can carry what, I would get in the game of promoting as many options as possible,” said Christopher Yoo, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You might find text-messaging companies competing on their openness policies.”

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2007 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.