I listen to a radio station that is broadcast from philly just about everyday on my drive home from work. The radio show is The Kidd Chris Show. They beat out any of the other "talk" shows that are within my range.

Just like with many other "shock jock" radio shows, they have "friends" of the show call in. This is similar to Howard Stern's Whack Pack or Opie and Anthony's Wackbag (a play on howards Whack Pack I suspect).

The way it normally works is they find a new caller. The personalities of the radio show are nice to them and give them stuff or invite them to events. They then let the callers beat up on these "friends". It's all a bit. They've got mentally retarded people, crippled people, transsexuals, people who think they've got tons of talent but really suck, etc.

They have a new bit and I was questioning the legality of it. They moved into a new studio and got a new phone system. I'm not sure what kind... I never tried to find out. I suspect it's a VoIP system due to the quality, but it's only speculation.

They have this one guy/girl who happens to be a transsexual as one of the "friends" of the show. Over the past 6 months, they've warmed up to this person and let the fans of the show beat up on the transsexual. The transsexual is an emotional wreck! The transsexual will constantly call into the show and it provides hours of entertainment. Like a train wreck... you don't want to watch/listen... but you have to.

Well, they started something new. They started call forwarding some of their internal lines to this person's cell phone. Most of the time, the fans of the show just leave obscene messages and fill up their mailbox.

Here is where it may be illegal. When call forwarding lines to a single line, they're basically creating a DoS on this person's phone. The person can't make any outbound phone calls and no legit messages can come through to voice mail because they're being filled with callers to the show berating this transsexual.

At one point, the mailbox got too full and wouldn't accept anymore messages. It didn't play their normal recorded message but instead changed to a prerecorded phone company message of "mailbox number xxx-xxx-xxxx" is full. So, it basically gave out this person's real number. They'll have to cancel their phone number and get a new one to avoid constant harrasment.

I don't know if this is just a bit or not. It would seem to me that the lawers for the show would be all over it. They might be able to get around it if they get the transsexual to sign something allowing them to forward calls to them, or provide a cell phone to them that wouldn't give up their real number, etc.

I realize there is more than one problem with this... morally and legally. I'm just questioning the legality of someone call forwarding a phone number to your phone and it causing a DoS on your phone and mailbox.