Denver airport censors free Wi-Fi network
Travelers using Denver International Airport's free Wi-Fi service may be shocked to learn that some popular Web sites with supposedly racy content is blocked from viewing.
That's right. Officials have blocked access to content they deem provocative on the airport's free Wi-Fi service.
The Denver Post points out that some of those questionable sites include, Vanity Fair, the gossip column perezhilton.com, the hipster-geek site boingboing.net, and photos from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Of course, hard copies of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue are displayed on newsstands in the airport along with issues of Penthouse and Hustler.
But the airport's spokesman Chuck Cannon told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he would rather "weather infrequent complaints about access than handle angry parents whose children might see pornography." The airport started blocking various sites when the service became free in November. Previously, users had to pay a fee to access Wi-Fi.
The airport is supposedly using the same technology that's used by the governments of Sudan and Kuwait to repress free speech.
The news has set off a firestorm of criticism from folks such as David Byrne, founder of the rock group "Talking Heads." He told the Denver Post that officials in Denver should "give people some credit. And the more credit you give them, the more they respond. It's just trusting people's discretion.
Byrne was supposedly blocked from boingboing.net while connecting through Denver on his way to Aspen last month.
What do you think about airport officials blocking content on their free Wi-Fi network? If they provide free access should they tell you which sites you can visit? And if that's the deal, would you rather simply pay for access? Feel free to comment in our "TalkBack" section below.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie.
out what they consider racy content then they can filter sites that
go against the censor's political ideology.
rather have restricted free content than anything for ten bucks an
hour like most air ports.
Besides, I think that it's probably healthy to block porn, even if the
occasional gossip site gets caught in the mix, in the interests of
children using the network.
Besides that, Denver Airport gets substantial public money so they are not a public business, and therefore have no right to engage in any blocking that could infringe on first ammendment rights.
Oooooohhhhh, it must be REALLY evil then!
I bet its the same technology the Red Cross and the little sisters of the poor use to block access to porn sites on their networks too.
I hate it when writers use rhetorical devices like that, it smacks of a bad writer.
you give someone power and they'll use it.
porn in those shops. Of course if you the kind of person who
wants to put a blouse on the Venus de Milo or a pair or Dockers on
Michaelangelo's David then you probably think that the women's
underwear ads in the junk mail is porn.
they should have every right to decide the content that they want to
make available. On the other hand, I would strongly object to my
cable provider doing the same thing, since I pay them for
unfettered access.
Also, I'm not sure how happy I would be to have dozens of laptops
playing videos from porn sited in front of my 3-year old.
business owned by an individual or is a public a facility payed for in
part with taxes?
shouldn't expose them to hard core bondage pornography, but
on the other hand what kind of porn is on Sports Illustrated's
swimsuit site, or boingboing?
It is free access controlled by the airport, but the airport does
take quite a bit of tax money making it a public entity of sorts.
I guess I would have fewer problems with it if it was just the
hard core stuff, people shouldn't be watching that in public
anyway. But some of the sites they chose seem odd - like they're
trying to drive up revenue on the news stand or something.
Furthermore, if you have children, then you should be minding them, especially in such a large [and potentially dangerous] place as an airport. As a parent, it is your job to take care of them and steer them away from things you happen to think are inappropriate...not bar others from accessing that content. You should be keeping a close eye, and hand if need be, on your little brood to make sure they aren't in others' business.
Personally, I wouldn't be checking out porn in an airport. I find it to be in poor taste and tact, but to coming across a NSFW article is not all too rare, and that shouldn't be blocked. I also imagine that someone who would choose to view such content would set themselves aside from the large crowds and children. Spare the lectures of moral-bankruptcy of those who view porn, it isn't necessary.
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by unquenchablefire
June 20, 2009 2:21 PM PDT
- Well, for anyone interested, DIA no longer censors their wifi, or if they do, they censor veeeery sparsely. I'm in the airport right now, and i checked if 4chan's /b/ was blocked - for science. It wasn't. If there's a site worth blocking, its that one. And i haven't hit any blocked sites ever in Denver airport.
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