User:Bluestarfish88/sandbox

History

Gloria Leonard, the editor of High Society magazine, is credited with being one of the first people to use a phone number for promotion of adult entertainment. Leonard recorded her own voice informing callers of the contents of the next issue of High Society magazine before its publication.

Phone sex lines were local telephone numbers advertised in local newsprint and adult publications such as High Society and Hustler. Phone sex service providers hired phone sex operators (PSOs) to receive calls at a commercial office. Callers provided their credit card information to pay for the call, which was billed after the call. Phone sex lines were also known as dial-a-porn. In 1987, AT&T released forty-four 1-900 phone numbers. It coincided with a national advertising campaign to attract businesses to enter into the premium-rate phone number industry. Other telecommunications companies such as MCI, Sprint, Verizon and smaller carrier Telesphere facilitated the growth of the phone sex industry. Toll-free, 1-900, and other premium-rate phone numbers allowed a volume of calls to reach a single phone number if the business had the equipment to route the calls. Typically calls were charged back to the caller's telephone bill. Advancements in Push-button telephone and payment technologies reduced the burden of telecommunications companies to handle billing for the phone sex service providers. Callers no longer provided their credit card to a receptionist or the PSO. Callers input their credit card into the phone.

Legal history

United States

In 1988, US Congress enacted an amendment to Communications Act of 1934 that prohibited the use a "telephone ... directly or by recording device" to make "any obscene or indecent communication for commercial purposes to any person," punishable by a $50,000 fine or six months in prison." The FCC enforced the law.

Sable Communications of California filed a lawsuit against the FCC. In Sable Communications of California v. FCC The company challenged the new statute citing the Telephone Decency Act violated the First Amendment. On July 19, 1988, U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima ruled that "the prohibition against 'indecent speech' on 900-number recordings was unconstitutional, though its ban on 'obscene speech' could stand."

On June 23, 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscene speech, even in commercial telephone calls, was not protected, though indecent speech was. Justice Byron White wrote for the high court's majority

There is no constitutional barrier under Miller to prohibiting communications that are obscene in some communities under local standards even though they are not obscene in others." "Sable, which has the burden of complying with the prohibition, is free to tailor its messages, on a selective basis, to the communities it chooses to serve.