Originally Posted by KRL

Do images stimulate sexual desire?

Does text stimulate sexual desire?

I'm arguing this point because I dealt with a point just like this once.

I had a phone sex biz before the Net. I had to deal with a right wing religious zealot state attorney general one year who wanted to prosecute the company by saying our phone sex messages were obscenity. I used the same argument like you are here, that these were just sound files and not images. And they were just regular silly porn, mostly simulated moaning groaning and sucking sounds. The prosecutor said it didn't matter, the sounds were stimulating people sexually and those sounds were obscene. We came back with "So moaning is considered obscene in the US?" "The simulated sucking sound created by girl placing her finger in her mouth is obscene?" It was totally ridiculous, yet we had no choice but to comply and shut down because we knew this guy was on a mission against the phone sex industry. The costs to let this guy prosecute and then spend years in court defending ourselves would have gone into the stratosphere.

This is a sample of what they said was obscene.

Sample Mp3 Phone Sex Message

Does that sound obscene to you? It doesn't to me. Its totally lame.

So they gave us the choice of shutting down the phone sex network or be prosecuted on obscenity charges and paying a fine of $75,000 per day for every day we kept our phone lines on past their order to comply.