The telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA ), 47 U.S.C. § 227, restricts the use of the facimile machine to deliver unsolicited advertisements. Specifically, the TCPA prohibits the use of "any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone fascimile machine". The TCPA applies only to those facsimile messages that contain "unsolicited advertisements". The statuatory prohibition applies to such advertisments sent to both residential and business facsimile numbers.

In 2005, the Junk Fax Prevention Act ammended the TCPA to permit the sending of unsolicited facsimile advertisements to individuals and businesses with which the sender has an established business relationship (EBR ) and to provide a process by which any sender must cease sending such advertisements upon the request of the recipient. On April 5, 2006, the commission adopted rules to impliment the Junk Fax Prevention Act. Among other things, 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200 requires the sender of fax advertisments to provide notice and contact information on the fax that allows recipients to opt out of future fax transissions from the sender and requires senders to honour opt out requests within the shortest reasonable period of time, not to exceed 30 days.

Taken from the Federal Communications Commission website at: http://www.fcc.gov

Also please see the F.C.C.'s fax sheet on this issue at http://fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/unwantedfaxes.pdf