BRAKING NEWS: FCC Rules on Peer-to-Peer Texting

Yesterday the FCC issued a much welcomed declaratory ruling in response to a 2018 petition by the P2P Alliance.  The P2P Alliance had asked the FCC to clarify that peer-to-peer texting platforms which require the user to manually send one message at a time are not autodialers under the TCPA.  The FCC not only agreed, but also clarified that whether a system can send messages to a large volume of numbers is not relevant.  What is relevant is whether the system can dial random or sequential numbers without human intervention.  Specifically, the FCC held that "if a calling platform is not capable of originating a call or sending a text without a person actively and affirmatively manually dialing each one, that platform is not an autodialer and calls or texts made using it are not subject to the TCPA’s restrictions on calls and texts to wireless phones."  The FCC disagreed with opponents of the petition who argued that P2P systems should be considered autodialers or else spammers would immediately gravitate to such systems as a way to "evade" the TCPA.  Very encouraging is the FCC's statement reiterating that, "[t]he TCPA does not and was not intended to stop every type of call. Rather, it was limited only to calls made using an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice."




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