What's a short code? Not too technical. People who use text messaging to vote to support their American Idol choices are using short codes. Our comments assert that, legally, short codes are subject to non-discrimination by the carriers. Our comments also assert that the underlying medium that short codes facilitate -- text messaging -- is a critical form of free speech. In fact, in our comments we point out that our petition

described how unreasonable discrimination in text messaging services harms speech, is anticompetitive, causes monetary harm, stifles innovation, affects the public health, and visits especially powerful harm on deaf and disabled users. [...]Text messaging is a critical new medium for speech whose growth is far outpacing mobile voice calling. Mobile carriers cannot be allowed to leverage their license to use the public’s airwaves in order to control who may say what to whom. These carriers have demonstrated that, given the chance, they will interfere with speech, and in fact continue to do exactly that to this day.

These non-discrimination rules that we contend must be applied to text messaging are the same ones we contend apply to the Internet, as net neutrality. Without unfair discriminatory gatekeeper control by phone and cable companies, speech and commerce both flourish.