First I read about the Saudi Arabia crackdown on service providers that resulted a block on SMS voting for certain “objectionable” television shows. Now I see that California has decided to ban political “advertisements” via SMS, according to Assembly Bill 582 from 2005:

This bill would, subject to certain exceptions, generally prohibit a person, entity conducting business, candidate, or political committee in this state from transmitting, or causing to be transmitted, a text message advertisement, including a political advertisement, to a mobile telephony services handset, a pager, or a 2-way messaging device that is equipped with short message or similar capability. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

Compare that with the news about last year’s campaigns in Ethiopia:

Two political parties contesting in Ethiopia’s May 15 national elections have been making effective use of mobile phone short message service to campaign.

The ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front ( EPRDF) and the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) have been campaigning via mobile short message service (SMS), calling people to vote for them.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that SMS sending and receiving is now blocked in Ethiopia, perhaps as a result of the run-up to the election last May. However, I can’t find any mention of it in the mainstream media. Until I can confirm the block, it makes for an interesting comparison to other ideas about policies and controls. For example, I believe the California law is based at least in part on the principle that cell-phone owners should not have to pay fees for incoming political advertisements. Yet rather than try to get service providers to make SMS political advertisements free, they prohibit the messages from being sent. And rather than put liability on the service providers to develop/implement spam filters for SMS, it seems the burden is now being shifted to the cell owners who will have to file a complaint or perhaps sue the originator (if they can figure out who it is).