3,000 Nuisance Text Messages = $256

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

A court has ordered a Chinese production company to pay $256 to a man who received over 3,000 text messages after his phone number was used in a TV show.

The court said the Runshi Rongguang Film Production Co. should have made sure the number was not in use before having a villain say it aloud on-screen, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. Chen discovered that his number had been used in a TV series called “Chinese Police — September Storm,” broadcast between 2004-06 and later released on DVD. A villain spoke the number slowly, to allow another character to write it down.

The company said it made up the number from a staff member’s birthday and did not mean to cause trouble, according to Xinhua. Source: Yahoo! News

We Say: Honestly, $256 doesn’t seem like enough for all the trouble … however, at least he wasn’t getting phone calls. I guess in China they don’t have the concept of 555-numbers, which are used in TV shows and movies here as a way to prevent this sort of thing from happening.