[epmos]

> Not only is it what they intended, it is what they explicitly wrote into law as the definition

You are correct, of course.

I don't think however this is as crazy as it seems at a glance. The author(s) of the law appeared to be trying to prohibit devices that try to call many telephone customers as opposed to contacting a specific number. Calling/texting everyone in town to sell overpriced pre-paid auto repair, illegal. Calling/texting John Doe about his upcoming scheduled visit to his MD, legal. In the later case, the phone number is stored (in a database record of John's contact information) and the system "dials" that number to send him a reminder text message. Paragraph (b) in the syllabus gives two reasons why--dialing emergency numbers and tying up all lines assigned to some entity.

Remember, from Facebook's point-of-view what happened here was something like that second case. They had an existing customer account with a given contact number and used that number to communicate about that account. Deguid did not in fact have a Facebook account. Perhaps as Facebook suggests a previous user of that number did.

This is not an unknown problem. I have a phone number that gets messages about a specific apartment complex frequently. Or did, I muted that sender so if they stopped sending half a year ago I would not know. I suspect some previous user of the number lived those apartments. If Facebook had lost their case those messages would stop. But so would my reminder about office visits to my doctor and I think I would be worse off overall.