In the 1920s, America was terrorized by the specter of the alcoholism; in the 1950s, reefer madness came to symbolize all that was evil. Today, at least according to Morality in Media, it is pornography that rises from the mists of depravity to imbrue mankind’s soul.
The American public, MIM posits in a 34-page “study paper” it has delivered to the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, and Congress, is forever doomed if it does not remedy “the dial-a-porn problem that exploded on the scene in the 1980s” and nip cell phone porn in the bud.
“This is a ‘study paper’ intended to educate and assist public officials in addressing the problem of phone pornography,” MIM President Robert Peters writes just before launching into almost seven pages of horror stories about societal ills precipitated by sexually oriented audiotext services. They include the requisite tales of children that have been irreparably damaged by contact with adult materials, as well as insinuation that phone sex is linked to organized crime, rape, and addiction. A lengthy section outlines the history of legislation and enforcement action in the area of “obscene” communications, along with MIM’s analysis of the legal landscape, including vexing presumptions about what Congress intended when it passed telecommunications laws.
The last half of the document comprises proposals for how Congress, the Supreme Court, and the FCC should deal with the cell phone porn problem that MIM avers will hasten America’s decadence.
Peters takes great effort in reprimanding the Supreme Court, implying it has been soft on crime because it “made the judge and jury the ultimate arbiters of illegality” where adult entertainment is concerned. Apparently, the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution – in such a way that it allows the people of a community to determine what goes on in their community – is not a tenable situation for the arbiters of all things moral. Peters accuses the justices of “paying lip service” to the protection of children while eviscerating any obscenity laws they don’t like.
Peters therefore advises the federal government to bring statutes dealing with the interstate transportation of obscene matter to bear on the cell phone industry—after suggesting that anything that is not “moans and groans, swimwear, and lingerie” is presumptively obscene. He also encourages the FCC to consider cell phones identical to broadcast media and to apply the commission’s broadcast indecency standards in the same manner. He encourages Congress to amend certain sections of the federal criminal code specifically to curb cell phone porn (which he repeatedly refers to as “obscene communications”) in order to “avoid wasteful litigation.”
Furthermore, Peters suggests that cellular carriers be held criminally liable if they allow potentially obscene material to be transmitted over their systems. Currently, telecoms are prohibited from allowing their own biases to determine to whom they provide service, and Peters insists that if the FCC won’t change that rule and allow telecoms to refuse to carry adult material (thereby placing prior restraint on free speech), then “Congress should.”
Perhaps most distressing is Peters’ insistence that “Congress…prohibit phone common carriers (including mobile carriers) from providing billing services for commercial [adult entertainment] vendors…Not only do phone carriers bill for dial-a-porn services, they also bill for Internet porn services, which are a source of easy-to-access porn for kids and for fraudulent schemes.” He also wants the Supreme Court to uphold the Child Online Protection Act, which prohibits the intentional posting, for commercial purposes, of website content that is harmful to minors. Congress enacted COPA in 1998; it was enjoined almost immediately because the justices found it impermissibly broad and vague.
As Peters himself points out in the document’s introduction, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
