T-Mobile Accused of Illegally Blocking Text Messages for Medical Pot Site

by Mike Hughes

Fri, Sep 24, 2010 

A company called EZ Texting is suing T-Mobile for “blocking its text messages for a medical marijuana Web site.” EZ Texting claims T-Mobile’s actions violate FCC rules. However, T-Mobile denies that the text service was blocked as a result of the medical pot site’s content.   

EZ Texting was supposed to get approval to use the texting service for marketing Weedmaps.com, according to T-Mobile. T-Mobile only approved the service for marketing bars and nightclubs. Either way, T-Mobile insists it can legally reject text content to “protect the carriers’ customers, businesses, and brands from offensive, abusive, fraudulent, or illegal information services.”   

While the accusation that T-Mobile is selectively censoring pot-related texts is an attention grabber, the larger story here might be how the Federal Communications Commission classifies text messages. Some are asking that the FCC classify texting along with phone calls, the same rules applying to each. Currently “the rules on text messaging are vague and T-Mobile said texts are considered information services, which a federal court recently said isn’t clearly under the FCC’s authority to regulate.”  

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