While British Telecom regards what happens on its lines as none of its business, and responds to complaints about sleazy record ed message and party line chat services only when they reach a deafening crescendo, and the US phone companies would like to get all sleaze off the line but feel constrained by the freedom of speech clause in the US constitution, France Telecom takes a halfway house: it is closing the existing 3669 network for all sorts of recorded messages and open line chat, which has become infested with messages rose – for pink read blue in English – on October 1, and all information providers will have to sign up for a new 3665 service, with the pornmerchants weeded out; but roser ie remains rampant on the Minitel viewdata network, where of the 3.5m hours of usage last year, an estimated 60% was for dirty blue services – and a judge just ruled that there is nothing illegal in these.
