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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| reply to rf_engineer
Re: No Free Speech on Free Wi-Fi
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! | |
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 | |
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! | |
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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