Dial-a-Porn Farce

There's a bureaucratic drama in the making, with more than the usual sex appeal. But it probably won't have a happy ending, because politicians seem constitutionally (no pun intended) incapable of sweeping the stage clean.

The players are a familiar lot: there's the business-villain, in this case the dial-a-porn industry. Enter, stage Right, conservative members of Congress. The supporting cast is drawn from the Federal Communications Commission, which has a role in this morality play as the Federal Phone Fuzz. Waiting in the wings are "the liberals," played by the civil-rights-attuned courts.

Act I: The time is 1983. Dial-a-prayer, dial-a-joke, dial-a-fortune, et al. are making money in a small way. Aha, say some entrepreneurs. How about dial-a-porn? But three months after the first services are on-line, Congress heroically sweeps in to restrict minors' access to interstate heavy breathing. Figure out how to do it, says Congress to its minions at the FCC. Okay, say the phone cops; from now on, porn-by-phone shall only be allowed at night. Act I ends in court, with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals sitting on the FCC: What about adults' First Amendment rights during the day? And anyway, says the court, this won't tame the teens. The lights fade to murmured sweet-nothings in the background.

Act II, two years later: The Phone Fuzz are back in a new costume. Dial away, says the FCC, but the porn purveyors can't connect you unless you charge the call on a credit card or obtain a special access number, application for which requires that you swear to be 18 or older. The best one-liner in this act: "We realize that people do occasionally lie, but that's the best we could do." As the curtain falls, the dial-a-porn industry is heading for court again.

Act III: The plot thickens. One phone company, Mountain States, responds to outrage from parents whose randy teens have run up hundred-dollar telephone bills. It decides to drop its several dial-a-porn services. But this voluntary action is no more satisfactory than the phone cops'—Act III also ends in court, with the Ninth Circuit ordering Mountain States to restore the service while the court considers the matter.

The final act in this juicy drama hasn't been played out yet. But it's a good bet that the writers, directors, and producers of this ridiculous farce aren't going to come up with an ending that will allow individuals to live happily ever after.

Instead, conservatives will absurdly continue trying to shield Americans from every sensory experience that just might corrupt them. In fact, Sen. Jesse Helms (R–N.C.) has dropped the facade of protecting minors. He wants to put dial-a-porn on permanent hold, via legislation that would banish from interstate telecommunications "any comment, request, suggestion or proposal which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent."

Liberals are no better. They're happy to force dial-a-porn on one business (the phone company) at the behest of another business (the phone-porn industry) in the name of freedom of expression. But that's just as intolerable as the Right's call for censorship.

Of course, the courts couldn't get away with it if it weren't for the special legal status of the phone companies. As regulated monopolies, they're treated as common carriers, meaning they must provide service to all comers—including, say the courts, purveyors of naughty messages.

And therein lies the real moral of this story: deregulate the phone industry—truly deregulate it, wiping away local monopoly status and allowing voice transmission services to compete—and everyone could be happy, or as near to bliss as is possible in a free society. Different services would be able to appeal to different customers by offering or promising not to offer such extras as on-line erotica. Customers wouldn't need the Phone Fuzz; they could switch services to get what they want.

Conservatives would have to swallow the element of free choice, but they wouldn't be driven by the logic of monopolistic utilities to have porn forced down the throats of businesses that want to serve their customers by not carrying it. And liberals could stop fighting rearguard actions against the conservatives on silly grounds. After all, would they seriously argue that the New York Times must carry centerfolds?

But don't sit in your seats holding your breath.