§ 6-47-1. Advertising by fax.
(a) No person or entity conducting business in the state of Rhode Island shall transmit
by facsimile (fax), or cause to be faxed, documents consisting of unsolicited advertising
material for the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition of any realty,
goods, services, or extension of credit unless:
(1) In the case of a fax, that person or entity must establish a toll-free telephone number
that a recipient of the unsolicited faxed documents may call to notify the sender
not to fax the recipient any further unsolicited documents.
(2) In the case of faxed material, the statement shall be in at least nine-point (9) type.
The statement shall be the first text in the body of the message and shall be of the
same size as the majority of the text of the message.
(b) Upon notification by a recipient of his or her request not to receive any further
unsolicited fax, no person or entity conducting business in the state of Rhode Island
shall fax or cause to be faxed any unsolicited documents to that recipient.
(c) As used in this chapter, "unsolicited fax� means any document or documents consisting
of advertising material for the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition
of any realty, goods, services, or extension of credit that meet both of the following
requirements:
(1) The documents are addressed to a recipient with whom the initiator does not have an
existing business or personal relationship.
(2) The documents are not sent at the request of, or with the express consent of, the
recipient.
(d) As used in this chapter, "fax� or "caused to be faxed� does not include or refer to
the transmission of any documents by a telecommunications utility or internet service
provider to the extent that the telecommunications utility or internet service provider
merely carries that transmission over its network.
(e) The recipient of an unsolicited fax, transmitted in violation of subsection (b) of
this section, may bring a civil action in superior court against the person or entity
that transmitted the unsolicited fax or caused it to be transmitted in violation of
subsection (b). Any transmission of an unsolicited fax in violation of subsection
(b) shall be considered a violation of chapter 13.1 of this title, known as the Deceptive
Trade Practices Act, and may subject the person or entity that transmitted, or caused
to be transmitted, the unsolicited fax to prosecution by the attorney general pursuant
to chapter 13.1 of this title. In any such action by either the recipient of such
unsolicited fax or the attorney general on behalf of the recipient or recipients,
damages may be awarded in the amount of five hundred dollars ($500) for each violation,
not to exceed a total of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000). The attorney general may,
in such circumstances as he or she may deem appropriate, aggregate multiple claims
against a person or entity alleged to have committed multiple violations of this section
and maintain a class action on behalf of all recipients of the unsolicited faxes.
In any action brought under this section, the court may award, in addition to the
relief provided in this section, reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.