Porn | Dirty Tactics Of A Growing Dial-a-Porn Empire

Dirty Tactics of a Growing Dial-a-Porn Empire

By Cathy Ruse

Dial 1-800-Worship and you could lose your soul.

The Associated

Press recently uncovered a greedy Dial-a-Porn network that gobbles up

1-800 numbers the moment they are relinquished and redirects them to

phone-sex services without changing their names. (David B. Caruso, "Porn

company is amassing 1-800 numbers," 4/19/11.) Phone numbers previously

held by Cadillac and Whirlpool are examples of other toll-free lines

that PrimeTel Communications of Philadelphia has transformed into

phone-sex lines through its business partner, National A-1 Advertising.

Apparently snaring the unsuspecting makes for good business.

The "dirty trick"

aspect of PrimeTel's approach is noteworthy, but so is the sheer number

of toll-free lines that PrimeTel has amassed. PrimeTel controls 1.7 million

800 numbers - more than any company, including Verizon and ATT.

And most of these toll-free numbers redirect callers to phone sex,

according to an industry source.

How many women (and

men) must be waiting to provide this degrading "service" to customers

on 1.7 million lines? And how many millions of lonely souls are willing

to pay so much per minute to have phone sex with strangers?

The Dial-a-Porn

industry was born in the 1980s. As early as 1983 the FCC reported that

phone sex lines received up to half a million calls a day. Employers

even went to Congress over the astronomical bills they had to pay for

calls employees made on company time.

But what made the

problem especially horrific, says Morality in Media, Inc. (MIM), was

that any child old enough to use a telephone could reach thousands of

Dial-a-Porn lines without proof of age or pre-payment; calls were

automatically billed to phone numbers.

MIM has chronicled

scores of news reports on the problem, including the case of the $10

million lawsuit filed against Pacific Bell and a phone sex company by

the parents of a 12-year old boy and the 4-year old girl he was accused

of sexually molesting after listening to phone sex for hours.

Psychologist Victor Kline, an expert on how pornography affects the

brain, asserted in sworn testimony that the boy's exposure to

dial-a-porn was a direct and causal contribution to the assault of the

toddler.

Fortunately the law

now requires commercial phone sex providers to take modest steps to

increase the likelihood that children are not among their customers

(such as requiring purchase by credit card). Unfortunately, what was a

somewhat contained problem in the 1980s (due to the static nature of

phones) has potentially exploded today in the age of the cell phone.

The AP story got

one part spectacularly wrong. "There is nothing illegal about using

toll-free phone services to promote adult entertainment," says the AP.

Nothing illegal if the content of your material is legal, that is.

No one has a First

Amendment right to express content that is "obscene." The Supreme Court

has upheld this distinction between legal and illegal speech and in the

1973 case of Miller v. California set guidelines for defining

what is "obscene," including "patently offensive representations or

descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted." Juries have

the last word on offensiveness and on whether material can be redeemed

for having serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

"Obscenity" is the legal term; a commonplace reference might be

"hardcore porn." Deep Throat, not Michelangelo's David.

The federal

criminal code specifically outlaws the use of the telephone to make

obscene communications for commercial purposes in 47 U.S.C. 223(b),

added by Congress in 1988 and upheld by the Supreme Court a year later

in Sable Communications of California, Inc. v. FCC. Dial-a-Porn

providers that peddle hardcore pornography, therefore, can and should

be prosecuted under 47 U.S.C. 223(b). Prosecutions have been brought in

the past and juries have found content to be obscene.

If most of

PrimeTel's 1.7 million numbers are phone sex lines, is the content

provided on every one of them staying this side of the line of legality?

Ultimately it's up

to the American people, as jurors, to decide what pornography is

obscene, and in this way to have a voice in shaping the culture. But if

obscenity prosecutions are never brought, then trials never commence,

juries never sit, and pornography, however extreme, is never curtailed.

Enforcing our nation's obscenity laws is the job of Attorney General

Eric Holder. Failing to enforce them robs Americans of their voice on

the matter.

Someone will shape the culture. Leaving it to the pornographers is madness.

Cathy Ruse is senior fellow for legal studies with the Family Research Council.