ASSEL, Germany -- A Get more information German court ruled on Thursday that people paid to talk dirty in the Internets swelling number of sex chatrooms should enjoy the same rights https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/saarladies12 as other workers, regardless of whether their job is immoral.

The court rejected claims by a north German firm offering live online sex chats https://buddypress.org/members/saarladys/profile/ 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 pbase.com/saarladies/profile company, which was not named in the hearing, is now liable for more than one million marks ($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, Thursdays ruling could spawn new claims.

Social security contributions in Germany are equivalent to about 41 percent of gross pay, though the center-left government has pledged to cut this back as part of a https://forum.cs-cart.com/user/109588-saarladys/ drive to make German job markets more flexible and the economy more competitive.