Masseuse Sues Publisher of Yellow Pages

Mikki Anderson calls herself “this little pea” in Pacific Bell Directory’s mattress.

Anderson will take the Yellow Pages publishing giant to Orange County Small Claims Court on Friday with a claim that the company has damaged her Laguna Hills therapeutic massage business by refusing to print its Web address.

Pacific Bell Directory this year identified six business categories for which it would no longer print e-mail or Web site addresses, massage among them.

The company’s reasoning: The sites could provide links to pornographic material, executives said.

“We’re not going to let our product serve as a gateway to that sort of thing,” said Sandy Kivowitz, a Pacific Bell Directory spokesman. “It’s a corporate philosophy.”

But Anderson argues that the publisher has not imposed its rules consistently. The policy does not cover the “Novelties--Retail” heading, for example, under which the Condom Revolution “adult gift shop” of Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa runs an ad in some editions of the phone book giving its Web site address along with its phone numbers.

Anderson also complains that Pacific Bell Directory lumps her company, which specializes in treating infants and pregnant women, in with businesses such as Sweet Dreams (“outside calls available”) and Naughty & Fun (“hot oil rubs” and “discreet billing”).

“If indeed they were going to clean up the phone book, I could accept it,” said Anderson, who owns StressBusters Massage Co. of Laguna Hills with her husband, Michael.

Anderson’s claim asks for $5,000 to offset the $200 a month she pays for a second ad in the South Orange County directory under the “Maternity Clothes--Retail” heading that includes her Web address, as well as the cost of a computer bought to handle her Web site traffic.

Kivowitz suggested that rather than suing, Anderson simply could have taken her business to a competing directory.

“If you’re going to do business with us, you have to abide by our policies,” he said.

But stomping away from Pacific Bell Directory can be costly. The company is the state’s largest Yellow Pages publisher, controlling 66% of the market and dominating California’s $2-billion-a-year directory business.

Besides, many competing publishers are crafting similar policies. Since the mid-1980s, most directories have installed guidelines limiting sexual content in ads. The sultry pictures and suggestive descriptions that used to accompany entries for escort services have all but disappeared.

“Basically, consumers were upset and didn’t think that stuff was appropriate,” said Larry Small, vice president of marketing services for the Yellow Pages Publishers Assn.

While Web site addresses appear innocuous, they undermine directories’ ability to control where their content leads users, Small said.

“The Web opens up to the whole world,” he said. “What if kids get ahold of the book and get onto pornographic Web sites or Web sites that teach you how to build a bomb? There’d be a huge backlash.”

So far, publishers have taken widely varied approaches toward Web site information.

GTE Corp., California’s second-largest Yellow Pages publisher, places no limits on who can list Internet addresses. Another publisher, Ameritech Corp., will not print Web addresses for adult entertainers and accepts ads only from “therapeutic” massage companies.

Pacific Bell Directory excludes e-mail and Web site information from ads under six headings: those for body piercing, adult entertainers, personal escort services, massage, therapeutic massage and singing and entertaining telegrams.

The publisher may add other categories to the list if phone-book users complain about them, Kivowitz said. Only a handful of other business owners, besides Anderson, have complained about the Web site rules, he said.

Anderson hopes her suit prompts Pacific Bell Directory to rethink who qualifies for its massage category and to print her address in her primary ad.

“It’s a little bit about money, but it’s 99% about the principle of the thing,” she said.