John Galt
Forward, March
Premium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp | No Free Speech on Free Wi-Fi
I guess...!
I bet this plays out in the courts.
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A is A |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| This will play out in the courts. Government entities have considerably less leeway in filtering content than a private ISP would have.
This will probably prove to be a weapon for the "bad guys" in two respects:
First, those opposing muni WiFi will use the ensuing court battles as a reason for cities not to deploy muni WiFi.
Second, those opposing net neutrality will say that they type of "moral" filtering being done here would not be allowable if a net neutrality provision were in place, so we shouldn't have net neutrality.
Both arguments are seriously flawed, but will be used against the forces of reason anyway.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
Premium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ
| reply to John Galt
filtering the porn could see a court case but preventing P2P cannot be dragged into court. simply because they could claim they are preventing network saturation caused by p2p.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| If they do it correctly, just throttling bandwidth without regard to application, they are probably on solid legal ground. If they single out one application or protocol, the case becomes much less defensible.
The legally acceptable solution has to be tailored to the problem--be it bandwidth consumption or whatever.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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John Galt
Forward, March
Premium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp
 ·CenturyLink
| reply to calvoiper
said by calvoiper  :Government entities have considerably less leeway in filtering content than a private ISP would have. There you have it...
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A is A |
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guitarzan
Premium
join:2004-05-04
Skytop, PA
·epix
| reply to John Galt
said by John Galt :I guess...! I bet this plays out in the courts. Wow, John, you just opened that hidden can of worms most people didn't see coming until now. No porn, no P2P, no political opposition allowed, restricted freedom of speech, as in banning blogs. This sure looks to get ugly in a hurry.
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Bass....the glue of rhythm and harmony...the heartbeat of the band.! Shaking the earth with deep,sonorous vibrations.The dark ominous thunder of an approching storm. |
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emptywig
Huh? What?
Premium
join:2002-08-05
Pasadena, TX
| reply to Kearnstd
They could say they want to filter porn because they don't want people j**king o** in public. I'm serious...do we really want people looking at porn in the coffee shop or on the bench outside the toy store?
Don't get me wrong, I like porn as much as the next guy, but not in public. Go home and look at that stuff. Free speech is not an unlimited right.
wig |
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rf_engineer
join:2003-08-04
USA
| said by emptywig :They could say they want to filter porn because they don't want people j**king o** in public. I'm serious...do we really want people looking at porn in the coffee shop or on the bench outside the toy store? Don't get me wrong, I like porn as much as the next guy, but not in public. Go home and look at that stuff. Free speech is not an unlimited right. wig Exactly. Porn != Free Speech.
It's a free network. If you need a porn fix that bad, go buy a connection at your home and do what you want with it. If someone really needs porn while in the park or in a coffee shop, they probably have some issues that need to be addressed by a professional.
As far as P2P being blocked, that's life. You get what you pay for on a free network, and this network is a shared resource. I know someone will bring up the "I'm a taxpayer!" argument, but it's still essentially a free network. If they want to limit access to preserve bandwidth for more productive uses, fine. Your tax dollars fund parks, but that doesn't mean you can go there and dig it up for minerals or play loud music and use it in a way that detracts or limits other users' use of the resource. |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| I think your point is well taken regarding any private ISP offerings (Google's Mountain View, CA effort comes to mind) but there is a different set of standards which apply to publicly funded enterprises.
If a publicly funded network blocks some websites, there will be court review of the choices made--more accurately, there will be court review of the process by which such choices are made.
As for what people do in public "in the coffee shop or on the bench outside the toy store", most of this usage currently is from privately funded networks (because there just aren't that many public networks yet.) Those networks are not required to either block or allow porn--it's entirely up to the provider at this point.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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emptywig
Huh? What?
Premium
join:2002-08-05
Pasadena, TX
| But if there is a citywide Wi-fi network, I can still go into that coffe shop and use the city wifi instead.
There is just no way one can reasonably assert that we must allow porn in public, funded by the public. You have to balance the rights of the individual with the rights of the public.
It is illegal (as in its a punishable offence - really against the law) for children to view porn, so it just seems unreasonable to assert that we must allow access to porn in public spaces. If I'm on a laptop surfing porn on the public sidewalk outside a toystore, is that really OK? Do we really have to allow that? Or next to someone's mom at the Arby's?
Of course not. No reasonable person (even an open-minded, pro-speech, porn-positive person like myself) would try to make that assertion.
I have never bought the argument that libraries could not filter porn, period. There is no government right to be supplied porn. Libraries never stocked porn magazines, why should they allow porn on their computers? Its been a nonsensical argument from the beginning.
Cheers,
wig |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| The question of what traverses a Wi-Fi network and what images a person may or may not display in a public are really separate questions.
While I agree that people shouldn't gratuitously display porn in public, this applies whether you're looking at a PC screen or you're looking at a dirty magazine.
Since there are plenty of "private" places where people will be able to surf a "public" Wi-Fi network, there isn't the legal justification to block the whole network just to prevent some perv from sitting in a coffee shop and displaying dirty pictures. Heck, if that is really his goal, then it's easy enough for him to download the images beforehand and then display them off disk. Whether or not the perv has Wi-Fi, public or private, in the coffee shop really doesn't matter.
Saying you must filter porn on any Wi-Fi network to prevent "public display" is like saying you must search every piece of carry-on luggage for porn to prevent the "public display" of dirty pictures on an airplane. In each situation, it's not the existence, transmission, or possession of the porn that is the problem--it's the gratuitous display of it that is the problem. That needs to be addressed directly, not indirectly by blocking information transfer.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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emptywig
Huh? What?
Premium
join:2002-08-05
Pasadena, TX
| True true. All true. I agree with everything you said.
And I still think it's ok to filter the porn.
The problem is, there's no real way to address, directly, the problem of gratuitous (or even inadvertant) display. There's no way to keep people from looking over a shoulder. Its hard to hide the contents of a 15" bright color display (or the bad porn music  )
There's no porn on cable or broadcast (I don't mean PPV-just regular cable).
I think that ultimately, this is just a matter of personal feeling. Like I said above, I agree with you on all your points, and if I were fifteen years younger (not commenting on your age - just mine  ) I would probably be against filtering the porn. But experience tells me that we don't need to be servicing someone's porn jones on a public network. Let them get it from a private provider. I'm fine with that.
Reasonable folks can disagree. 
Cheers,
wig |
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