Landmark case awards damages for junkmail texts

A mobile phone subscriber from Nanjing has won a landmark lawsuit brought against China Unicom for sending unsolicited promotional text messages. This was the first case of its kind in China. The Baixia District People's Court in Nanjing ordered the Jiangsu branch of China Unicom to pay Wang Jun Rmb5,000 in compensation after he complained that he had been bombarded with unsolicited publicity messages offering him the chance to win a prize from the telecoms operator. Wang had called for Rmb40,000 and a public apology in local newspapers for the mental anguish he claimed the messages caused. Wang suffers from chronic neurasthenia and depression.

Wang said he was wary of using the '0000' option to unsubscribe from the mailing list as he feared being set up for one of the many text-message automatic payment scams that have been widely reported in the Chinese press. However, he was told by China Unicom that the only way to unsubscribe was to send the '0000' message. Wang then also complained that it was unfair that he had to pay to unsubscribe from something that he had not subscribed to in the first place, however small the cost of the text message (Rmb0.1).

The judge highlighted the difficulty of handling the case due to the lack of appropriate laws and regulations covering such cases. This has drawn attention once again to the longstanding delays in the publication of China' telecoms bill which was supposedly to ber ready for publication last year but has become bogged down in State Council and NPC committees. The bill is supposed to provide, amongst other things, a more solid legal foundation for dealing with cases such as this one. However, it has been expected for more than twenty years in one form or another and there is scepticism in the industry about a) whether it will ever get published and b) whether if it is published it will have been watered down too much to be effective.

CMI - 22/8/06