47 U.S.C. § 223 — Obscene or harassing telephone calls in the District of Columbia or in interstate or foreign communications

This section makes several kinds of harmful phone and internet communications illegal. (a) Prohibited acts generally. It is a crime to, in interstate or foreign communications: (A) knowingly use a telecommunications device to create and send an obscene or child-pornographic message, meaning to abuse, threaten, or harass someone; (B) do the same knowing the recipient is under 18; (C) make an anonymous call or use a device, meaning to abuse, threaten, or harass a specific person, whether or not anyone actually talks; (D) make someone's phone ring repeatedly or continuously to harass them; or (E) call or message someone repeatedly, with conversation happening, solely to harass them. It is also a crime to knowingly let a telecom facility you control be used for any of this, intending it be used that way. The penalty is a fine under title 18, up to 2 years in prison, or both. (b) Prohibited acts for commercial purposes; defense to prosecution. It is a crime to knowingly make, by phone, an obscene commercial message reachable by anyone, or an indecent commercial message reachable by anyone under 18 or by anyone who did not consent — this applies whether the maker placed the call or not, and whether live or recorded. Obscene commercial messages carry a fine and up to 2 years in prison; indecent commercial messages reaching minors or non-consenting adults carry a fine up to $50,000 and up to 6 months in prison. It is a defense that access was restricted to adults using the method in subsection (c). Intentional violations also carry an extra $50,000 fine per violation (each day counts separately), plus a possible civil fine of $50,000 per violation, brought by a court or by the Commission itself. The Attorney General may also sue to stop ongoing violations. (c) Restriction on access to subscribers by common carriers. If a phone company collects a fee for one of these commercial messages and passes some of it to the message provider, the company generally cannot give a subscriber access to that message unless the subscriber first asked in writing. Carriers acting in good faith to block access, or good-faith reliance on the provider's own representations about the content, are protected from lawsuits over that decision — except a blocked provider may sue for a declaratory judgment limited to whether its content really falls in the restricted category. (d) Sending or displaying offensive material to persons under 18. It is a crime to knowingly use an interactive computer service to send obscene or child-pornographic content to a specific person under 18, or to display such content where a person under 18 can see it, in interstate or foreign communications — or to knowingly let a facility you control be used this way, intending that use. Penalty: a fine under title 18, up to 2 years in prison, or both. (e) Defenses. A person is not liable under subsections (a), (d), or (h) just for providing access to a network they do not control, if their role is only things like transmission or storage and does not include creating the content — unless they conspire with, or knowingly advertise for, whoever created the illegal content, or they own or control the network involved. Employers are not liable for an employee's or agent's actions unless those actions were within the job's scope and the employer knowingly authorized, approved, or recklessly ignored them. It is also a defense, for certain violations, that a person made good-faith, reasonable efforts to keep minors away from the content, or restricted access using a verified credit card, debit account, or adult access code. The Commission may describe reasonable measures for this, but cannot enforce their use, endorse specific products, or treat interactive computer services as common carriers. (f) Violations of law required; commercial entities, nonprofit libraries, or institutions of higher education. No one can be sued just for a good-faith effort to comply with this section, if that effort itself broke no other law. States and local governments cannot impose liability on commercial entities, libraries, or colleges for actions under subsection (a)(2) or (d) that conflicts with how this section treats them — but states may still regulate purely in-state services, as long as that does not create conflicting rules for interstate service, and states may still regulate conduct this section does not cover. (g) Application and enforcement of other Federal law. Nothing in subsections (a), (d), (e), or (f), or their defenses, limits any other federal law. (h) Intentional disclosure of nonconsensual intimate visual depictions. This subsection defines terms like "consent," "digital forgery" (a realistic fake intimate image made with software, AI, or similar tools), "identifiable individual," "interactive computer service," "intimate visual depiction," and "minor." It is illegal to knowingly publish, using an interactive computer service in interstate commerce, a real intimate image of an identifiable adult if: the image was made or obtained when the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy; it was not voluntarily shown in public or commercially; it is not a matter of public concern; and publishing it either intends to cause harm or actually causes psychological, financial, or reputational harm. It is illegal to publish such an image of a minor with intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or sexually gratify someone. The same two rules apply to "digital forgeries" — for adults, if the forgery was published without consent (plus the same privacy, non-public, and harm conditions); for minors, if published with the same abusive intent. Exception: these rules do not apply to lawful law enforcement or intelligence activity; good-faith disclosures to police, in legal filings, for medical or educational purposes, to report unlawful conduct, or to seek help; disclosures meant to help the person shown; someone publishing their own image; or images that are themselves child pornography or obscene depictions of child abuse under other named laws. Penalties: up to 2 years for offenses involving adults, up to 3 years for offenses involving minors, both with fines under title 18. Consenting to the image being created does not mean consenting to it being published, and sharing the image with one other person does not mean consenting to wider publication. Threatening to commit these offenses is also a crime: the same penalty as the underlying offense for threats about real images; up to 18 months for threats about adult digital forgeries; up to 30 months for threats about minor digital forgeries — all when the threat is meant to intimidate, coerce, extort, or cause distress. Courts must order anyone convicted under this subsection to forfeit the illegal material, related profits or property, and any personal property used to commit the crime, following procedures in section 853 of title 21. Courts must also order restitution, the same way as under section 2264 of title 18. This subsection does not limit other related laws, including section 2252 of title 18. (i) Definitions. This subsection defines "telecommunications device" (which does not include an interactive computer service, does not add new duties for broadcasters or cable operators, and for subsection (a)(1)(C) includes any device or software used to originate Internet-based communications), "interactive computer service," "access software" (tools that filter, sort, or move content without creating it), "institution of higher education," and "library."