The strange but true cyber risk: TCPA

Our staff—at least the ones who keep up on this topic (and there are surprisingly quite a few)—was recently drawn to a contributed piece by Adonis Hoffman in The Hill about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The article from Hoffman, chairman of Business in the Public Interest and adjunct professor of Communication, Culture & Technology at Georgetown University, was creatively titled Does TCPA stand for ‘total cash for plaintiffs’ attorneys’?

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act was first signed into law in 1991 when the world was a much different place. Among the law’s provisions, it restricts telephone solicitations auto-dialing systems, prerecorded messages, text messages, and fax machines.

But, of course, technology has advanced greatly since 1991 and businesses have struggled with the contemporary applications of the law. The Federal Communications Commission, which was delegated the TCPA, has issued numerous declaratory rulings to clarify the law’s provision for today’s world.

One of the latest, occurred last summer when the FCC issued some clarifications of the TCPA and expanded its reach. This was not the greatest news for business. The TCPA is an expensive federal statute. Violations can result in liability of at least $500 for each fax, text or call.

 As Hoffman points out (he is certainly not the first but is the first to reassign the law’s acronym so creatively), plaintiffs’ attorneys have had a field day with this law. A company’s misstep is quickly turned into a class action, and often the attorneys benefit from a settlement far more than the class.

This story in an excerpt of the original. The content originally appeared in Cyber Front Page News. To read the whole story, you must be a subscriber. Subscribe now.