FEC EXEMPTS POLITICAL SMS ADVERTISERS FROM DISCLOSURE RULES
Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted 4-1 Thurs. to exempt short-message service (SMS) developer Target Wireless from disclosure requirements for political candidates who use wireless phones to advertize their political campaigns. FEC said it would be impractical to have disclaimer of information about sponsor of message due to limited amount of text that could be included into SMS message. FEC Vice Chmn. Karl Sandstrom (Chmn. David Mason was absent) said: “They may not have the benefit of knowing who pays for it, but what’s more important is that we allow the technology to be used as a part of political debate the same way as we allowed bumper stickers or water towers.” Comr. Michael Toner said: “I think that we should broaden the ability for people to use electronic forms of communications.”
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Target Wireless filed petition with FEC last month saying that because of technology limitations that allowed each SMS text message to contain not more than 160 characters, fine print of federal disclosure requirements would take all the space in message, leaving no room for campaign material. Target compared wireless phones with advertising media such as bumper stickers, water towers, pens and pencils that also were limited to small number of text characters and for which disclosure exemptions had been practice for long time. However, Comr. Danny McDonald, who voted against SMS petition, said cellphones shouldn’t be compared with water towers and bumper stickers because “phones are much more personalized.”
Commission encouraged political advertisers to include phone number or Web site address at end of SMS message to allow message recipients to identify sponsor of message as alternative to putting “paid for by” notices that would take up to 40 characters of message. Diana Hartstein, lawyer for Target Marketing, said remaining 120 characters wouldn’t be enough because they would include both main message to which ad was attached and ad itself.
FEC also discussed possibility of abbreviating messages. “Abbreviation could be an effective way to resolve the issue,” Comr. Scott Thomas said. Toner agreed: “I think that makes a lot of sense, and that is something we could adopt.” However, he said he wasn’t “sure how many people in Middle America would understand” what abbreviations meant. After discussion, Commission decided not to go with abbreviations to avoid multiple requests from potential advertisers about abbreviation standards. FEC also said its decision could be applied “only to the particular request we received from Target Wireless.” FEC representative said agency would hold another hearing if technology limitations changed.
FEC questioned availability of viable market for campaign advertising via SMS messages in U.S. Sandstrom said: “I hope they'll find political advertisers who will want to use it.” He said, though, that it was good way to remind people to vote on election day. Data published by washingtonpost.com said SMS, which is popular in other parts of world, has been slow to catch on in U.S. It said there were 131 million cellphone subscribers in U.S. by end of 2001, and only 4.3 million were using SMS messages. In Europe, almost all of 293 million wireless users had 2-way SMS devices by end of last year, and 175 million regularly used them. Hartstein said “wireless technology [was] catching up in the United States.” She said she expected increased interest by political candidates in advertising their campaigns through cellphones because they would “see how people communicate.” She said 15 million messages were expected to be transmitted through digital cellphones in U.S. by 2004.