President Bush to Junk Faxers: Start Your Engines

BUSH SIGNS MEASURE TO LEGALIZE JUNK FAXING AS BOWEN BILL BANNING THE PRACTICE IN CALIFONRIA NEARS GOVERNOR’S DESK

President Bush signed legislation over the weekend to gut the 14-year-old ban on junk faxing, leaving the pending SB 833 by Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) as the only protection for California fax machine owners against America’s junk fax outfits that are revving up their fax machines and getting ready to hit the “send” button.

If you think junk faxing is bad now, hold on to your paper and toner because it’s going to get worse thanks to the decision by Congress and the President to basically legalize the practice,” said Bowen, the author of a 2002 California law that repealed the state’s “opt-out” junk fax law in 2002 in favor of the then-tougher (and now gutted) federal “opt-in” ban. “The law is so broad and so open-ended that the only thing it guarantees is that junk faxing – legalized junk faxing – is going to go through roof.”

In 1991, Congress passed and then-President George H. Bush enacted the original ban on sending unsolicited fax ads as part of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In 2002, Bowen authored AB 2944 which repealed a weaker “opt-out” junk fax law in California and made it clear the stronger “opt-in” federal law applies in the state. SB 833 takes the tight federal ban on junk faxing as it existed prior to the President’s action gutting the ban and copies it into state statute to continue to protect California’s fax machine owners.

Thanks to Congress and the President, marketers can now legally hijack people’s fax machines and turn them into their own personal printing presses,” continued Bowen. “The silver lining of the new law is it doesn’t prevent states from passing stronger laws and we need to take advantage of that opening. We need a strong state junk fax ban to prevent Californians from getting stuck paying for sales pitches they didn’t ask for and don’t want.”



S. 714 by U.S. Senator Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) was introduced in April as the “Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005,” though it’s anything but “prevention” because it gives any business from whom you have ever bought or simply shopped for a product or service the right to send you unsolicited junk fax ads. S. 714 gives junk fax outfits, such as Fax.com, the ability to broadcast millions of junk faxes a day and simply claim the recipients had called and asked for the information or had bought something from the advertiser in the past. There's no requirement in S. 714 for businesses to demonstrate a relationship actually ever existed. S. 714 effectively guts the federal junk fax ban in favor of an opt-out scheme whereby junk faxers would include an “opt-out” number on the fax that people would have to call to ask each advertiser to stop faxing them. S. 714 allows states to enact provisions that are stronger than the federal law, which is what SB 833 attempts to do.

Junk faxes are a postage-due invasion of your privacy that cost you time and money because you wind up footing someone else’s advertising bill,” said Bowen. “Californians have said over and over again how much their privacy means to them and they’re just fed up with being hassled and harassed by advertisers, regardless of whether it’s by phone, e-mail or fax, and they want to be left alone. I’ve never had a single person come up to me and say, 'Please, I beg of you, let me get more junk faxes.’”

SB 833 passed the state Senate on a bipartisan 30-5 vote, has cleared two Assembly policy committees, and will be heard in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on July 13.