Cingular Filtering Porn From Wireless Web? 316
Atryn writes: "Cingular Wireless is reportedly blocking its customers from accessing 'objectionable material" via the Wireless Web.' The spokesman mentioned in the story disclaims knowledge of any blocking -- can any Cingular customers reading this confirm it?
Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:You buy bandwidth... (Score:2, Insightful)
You must be HOW old.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You must present a drivers liscense and CREDIT CARD to get a cell phone.
HOW can they legally restrict you from viewing ANYTHING legal to you as an adult via ANY means?
Pr0n is legal for me to view if I'm old enough so for crying out loud let me if I wanna!
Did I miss something???
My $.02
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
No ifs, ands, or buts. Censorship is just a bad thing. If they have bandwidth problems, they can rate limit the users. That's an entirely different concept than limiting them based on the content of the traffic.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
See, this here is what I don't understand about the state of the telecoms world.
Your statement:
See, my immediate and overriding thought is: I'm the CUSTOMER. I give you money, you give me bandwidth. How I use it is up to me. I've bought - BOUGHT - bandwidth from you, and now you're putting all these restrictions on me because you didn't do your sums correctly and you're making a loss from insufficient service provision.
The same applies in spades to all the cable modem, ADSL, and prepaid dialup plans we see getting post-hoc restrictions placed on them. To me, this looks like the service provider is an incompetent cretin that can't do their sums, work out how much capacity they've *bought*, how much they *need* to service their paying customers, and charge appropriately right off the bat.
Seriously, folks, is the corporate world so seriously screwed up that no-one is capable of this?
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You must be HOW old.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
One requirement to have perfect competition and a perfectly efficient market (something you seem to be *assuming* exists) is that the consumers have perfect knowledge. According to theory in aperfectly efficient market, everyone must know everything there is to know about the product to ensure they are making an informed decision. That, coupled with the fact that theory assumes that everyone who takes place in the market is rational (not true, but lets assume it anyway), then we are simply complaining and creating a ruckus so that people know what cingular is doing.
Just as a side point, this is from the company whose ad campaign exclaims that we all have a right to free expression.
In the words of Quickdraw: Hold on Thar! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, you're entitled to freedom of speech.
Yeah, you're endowed with certain inalienable rights.
But, last I looked, Cingular isn't the Government (tho they probably do own a chunk of it.)
Check your service agreement for those nasty little phrases like, "Cingular reserves the right to ...", which give them all the clout they need.
All the clout you need is to go find someone who doesn't have those little phrases in the contract and subscribe to their service. You probably have that right, as, last I looked, no bills have passed the House binding you to indentured servitude.
Re:pr0n!=bad for kids (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a moot point. American culture is what God intended. God hates panders, sodomites and pornographers. Therefore America cannot have porn. America is the end of history and is what is supposed to happen, therefore the rest of the world's mores are wrong and must be subjugated to American will.
I am being outrageous to make a point, but talking morality to Americans is like talking seal clubbing to a polar bear. They have it down, any other voice or idea is wrong. Just watch Fox News [foxnews.com] for a fair and balanced assessment of the subject.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
News for you: The customer is not always right, and Cingular's customers don't own the network. Cingular does (or it leases the network, nitpick, nitpck). Cingular does have the right to filter "objectionable material," and you, if you don't like that, have a right to do business with another company.
General problem? DID THEY TEST OTHER SITES?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now compare this old business-week article [businessweek.com]
And this USA today article [usatoday.com]:
What may have happened is that the sources tried to get to porn sites, didn't work, and then concluded that those sites were being banned in specific. But it could be a general compatibility problem affecting many sites.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
Re: OT pr0n!=bad for kids (Score:4, Insightful)
In my early teen years I used to be all about the porn, "raging hormones" and whatnot. Then I came to the realization that looking at porn affected my view of women. No, it didn't completely desensitize me to their feelings and needs, but I did think about them in a purely sexual context more often when I was regularly looking at porn. Now that I consciously avoid pr0n the amount of time that i spend thinking about women in a sexual context has greatly decreased.
I'm not saying that the viewing of pornography is necessarily bad, but especially at the very impressionable stages in a young boy's life (or girl's life, although girls seem to have less of a propensity for pornography), viewing pornography could cause a boy to view the opposite sex more as objects, and less as equal humans.
Re:pr0n!=bad for kids (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I get so sick of hearing this shit from so many people. There's this wonderful myth floating around a handful of EU countries that America is nothing but a land of prudes. "Most everywhere else in the world" actually seem to think that we're The Great Satan: a nation of nothing but drunk, dope addicted fornicators.
When terrorist in Asia, Africa, and South America slaughter innocent tourists as fast as they can claiming they will do anything to stop the spread of "American culture" it's not because they are afraid we may steer their daughters away from a profitable career in adult videos.
Get a fucking clue.
Re:I disagree. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)