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While you are correct, you are also not reading it correctly. (d) refers to "obscene or child pornography". While some pornography is obscene under US law, in
by eesmith 2y ago
While you are correct, you are also not reading it correctly.
(d) refers to "obscene or child pornography".
While some pornography is obscene under US law, in general pornography is "indecent", not obscene.
See Sable Communications of California v. FCC, from when the US tried to regulate dial-a-porn, and the courts decided the original law was overly broad.
Only (b) refers to "indecent communication" (and only in the context of "commercial purposes"), and it specifically requires a telephone.
If I understand the history, that was from the 1989 amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, known as the Helms Amendment, and the courts decided that was sufficiently narrowly tailored to not affect 1st amendment rights (see the court judgement in Dial Information Services v. Thornburgh).
It appears, based on my shallow understanding of the history, that I can set up an automated recording such that if you call it, it plays back a recorded sex chat which is indecent but not obscene. And I can do that without requiring age identification from those who call.
I might have to inform the telephone company that I have done so, so they can let people who opt-out of being able to connect to such numbers from doing so, but otherwise it's my first amendment right.
Which circles us back to yet another analogy which seems more appropriate than your focus on the sale of pornography in physical stores.