August 10, 2000 08:18am
Online Sex Workers Have Rights Too
Source: Reuters
(KASSEL, Germany) -- A German court ruled on Thursday that people paid to talk dirty in the Internet's swelling number of sex chatrooms should enjoy the same rights as other workers, regardless of whether their job is ''immoral.''
The court rejected claims by a north German firm offering live online sex chats that the immorality of the work done by its staff should exempt the company from having to pay social security contributions for them.
A judge ruled that the morality of online sex services, which mostly employ women to meet a seemingly insatiable and largely male appetite for impersonal stimulation, was irrelevant and decided staff should be treated as they would in other jobs.
The company, which was not named in the hearing, is now liable for more than $461,900 to cover contributions for staff it said were self-employed freelancers, but who the court decided were employees.
Workers were paid according to the frequency and length of their one-to-one erotic conversations, which the firm launched in the mid-1990s over a computerized teletext system that was a predecessor to the Internet in Germany.
Even mainstream Internet portals in Germany, where topless women are a nightly fixture on national television, are awash with links to subscription-based Web sites promising such delights as ``live chats with hundreds of the hottest girls.''
Since most firms who run these sites -- along with countless premium-rate telephone sex lines offering similar services minus the accompanying porn pictures -- employ staff on a similar freelance basis, Thursday's ruling could spawn new claims.
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