In an important decision concerning the Junk Fax portions of
the Telephone Consumer Protection Act ("TCPA"), the
Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") recently issued
a declaratory ruling clarifying the scope of the TCPA fax
exemption. The ruling came in response to a petition filed by
Amerifactors Financial Group, LLC ("Amerifactors")
requesting clarification from the FCC as to whether certain fax
services can be fairly classified as fax machines within the
meaning of the TCPA.
Like many other companies operating in the fax-based marketing
space, Amerifactors utilizes online fax services to transmit its
marketing communications. Such online fax services operate
through use of "'a cloud-based service consisting of a fax
server or similar device that is used to send or receive documents,
images and/or electronic files in digital format over
telecommunications facilities' that allows users to 'access
faxes the same way that they do email by logging into a server
