ACA International, the association of credit and collection professionals, believes that 25 years since the enactment of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, plaintiff’s attorneys and federal regulators have manipulated the original intent of the law, transforming it from a statute that protects valuable consumer communication with businesses into a tool for frivolous lawsuits.

In its latest white paper titled “The Imperative to Modernize the TCPA: Why an Outdated Law Hurts Consumers and Encourages Abusive Lawsuits,” ACA outlined why the TCPA must be modernized to help consumers and allow legitimate businesses to communicate with these consumers effectively.

“To function as an effective consumer-protection measure, the TCPA must be reformed to more accurately reflect the current state of communication technology in addition to the ways both businesses and consumers use those technologies,” ACA director of research Josh Adams said in the white paper.

According to the latest in ACA’s series of research endeavors, the number of TCPA-related lawsuits skyrocketed 948 percent from 2010 through 2015. Damages in a TCPA lawsuit are set at $500 per unintentional violation and $1,500 per intentional violation.

ACA emphasized these damages add up quickly in class action lawsuits and are part of the reason why TCPA litigation has increased so dramatically in the last five years.

However, the paper noted the outcome of these class action lawsuits generally benefits plaintiff’s attorneys more than the consumers themselves. In 2014, the average attorneys’ fees for a TCPA class action settlement were $2.4 million, while the individual consumer received just $4.12.

ACA mentioned another reason for the proliferation of unnecessary TCPA lawsuits is that the statute has been increasingly applied across a diverse range of industries beyond telemarketing, including necessary informational calls from legitimate debt collection companies to consumers. The paper noted debt collection professionals, as well as legitimate businesses across a wide scope of industries, must be able to send vital, non-solicitous communications to consumers in the way they want to be contacted.

“This problem has been exacerbated by the Federal Communications Commission, the agency responsible for implementing the TCPA, whose broad interpretation of the statute has failed to provide a pathway to compliance for businesses using modern communications,” according to the white paper.

ACA chief executive officer Patrick Morris echoed the points made in the white paper — which can be downloaded here — that extends the series of projects the organization has done recently, including an analysis of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s complaint database as well as clarification about general complaints associated with collections.

“It is no wonder that there are so many businesses that rely on effective communication with their customers coming to together to call for TCPA reform,” Morris said. “This includes credit agencies, universities, retailers, banks and utility companies. They all want relief from abuses of an outdated law.”

To solve these problems with the TCPA, ACA advocates in the white paper that the law must be clarified to allow for the use of modern communication technology to reach consumers in the modern marketplace. Specifically, ACA declared that the FCC must maintain the balance Congress contemplated in enacting the TCPA to protect consumer privacy interests without impeding legitimate business operations.