Critics say is same technology used by Sudan and other oppressive regimes and should have no place in the US.
Travelers using Denver International Airport’s free Wi-Fi service cannot visit Internet sites that airport officials consider provocative.
A report in The Denver Post says the airport is blocking Vanity Fair magazine’s Web site, the hipster site boingboing.net and others.
Airport spokesman Chuck Cannon says officials decided to block access to potentially racy sites when the airport made its wireless internet service free in November.
Cannon says the airport would rather deal with infrequent complaints about access than handle angry parents whose children might see pornography.
Critics say the airport is using the same technology used by repressive regimes in Sudan and Kuwait.
“Give people some credit,” said David Byrne, founder of the legendary art-rock band Talking Heads, who was blocked from boingboing.net. while connecting through DIA to an Aspen workshop last month. “And the more credit you give them, the more they respond. It’s just trusting people’s discretion.”
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I know that libraries often block sites with pornography themes because the government makes them do it but Boing would be okay because it’s information links. An airport wouldn’t have an educational or free speech obligation though. I wonder if they would take it further and block information about other services outside of the airport that they were competing with? It could come to that..
@Boomer
One you start allowing censorship its a slippery slope because one guys porn is another’s art or poetry
Well Airports are private so they can do whatever they want with their network however I think its wrong headed and demeaning to tell people what they can and cannot view. I think the only way around this is for people to complain en mass and generate loads of bad press.
Why are airports private? With all the feds and metal detectors it seems to me the opposite is true.
I guess they are and they aren’t depending upon which way you look at it. They will get away with it simply because they’re playing the “inappropriate for children” card. Still the fact that it could be used for anti-competetive purposes is a definate worry.
Bloody hell why does everything have to be safe for children? Is this the world we want to live in as adults?
I’m sick of the control police using this children protection thing as a reason for censoring and control.
Parents take responsibility for your own children if you want control move to a communist country.
Vanity Fair is Pornography? wtf?
Fantastic. I can see it now.
“Google has been blocked because of pornography. A message brought to you by the Yahoo! search engine.”
*shivers*
The parents should be told to turn on the damn parental control software that just about any computer comes with. Why do parents today want OTHER people to raise their kids for them? The kids are growing up in such a “controlled” society that–by the time they get to be adults–they’re going to be mere robots.
As for the comment on libraries our Library here at the college does NOT censor anything. Our ITD Department tried to at one time but the Librarians went berserk and the censorship was quickly shut down. The American Library Association categorically rejects censorship of any kind.
So the airport should tell the parents to be responsible for their own children. It’s not up to the airport or to anyone else–for that matter–to baby sit.
So the only reason I stumbled onto this discussion is because im actually at the denver airport right now on my laptop and I did a google search to try and figure out why I cant get on facebook or stream last nights episode of heroes from nbc.com
so facebook and heroes was deemed potentially offensive enough to get blocked?
really denver?!
WOW!