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Cingular Filtering Porn From Wireless Web?

Posted by timothy on from the handhelds dept.

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?

14 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Well... by PepsiProgrammer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Censorship is a very bad thing, but some perv downloading huge ammounts of porn eating bandwidth from other customers is almost as bad as well. Difficult situation

    --
    "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
    1. Re:Well... by photon317 · · 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.

      --
      11*43+456^2
    2. Re:Well... by henley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      See, this here is what I don't understand about the state of the telecoms world.

      Your statement:

      ...you degrade everyone elses service as well, even if you are paying for your chunk...

      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?

      --

      --
      I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
    3. Re:Well... by MisterBlister · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if this is true, its NOT A CASE OF CENSORSHIP. People on Slashdot tend to throw that word around far too freely. When a company stops you from doing or saying something on their equipment (even if you pay for it/lease it), that's not censorship...If you don't like their policy, use a competitor. If the GOVERNMENT mandated that cell phone web access couldn't include smut, THAT would be censorship.

    4. Re:Well... by MisterBlister · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't buy bandwidth. You LEASE access to the ISP's equipment. They are free to block whatever they want. If you don't like it, get another ISP, but ultimately that's the way it works.

    5. Re:Well... by martyn+s · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We're not talking about legality here. I know Cingular *can* do whatever it wants. But censorship is still a bad thing, and like any other bad thing and I don't have to be OK about it. It seems you're taking a very market oriented approach, and even though that's not always a suitable approach, I'll use it anyway and still make you look like a fool.

      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.

    6. Re:Well... by jimbolaya · · Score: 3, Insightful
      If you want to view porn on your cell phone, find another provider. But the majority of "wireless web" customers will probably be using it for low-bandwidth purposes like e-mail and stock quotes. Those users don't want their network--which they pay for--clogged by mobile perverts. Bandwidth is not an infinite resource, particulaly when it comes to mobile phones.

      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.

      --

      There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.

    7. Re:Well... by FatAlb3rt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But will they let you out of the contract early w/o the penalties if you claim that's the reason you have the phone in the first place?

  2. In the words of Quickdraw: Hold on Thar! by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Yeah, you're a customer.

    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.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  3. Re:pr0n!=bad for kids by The+Ape+With+No+Name · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans.

    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 for a fair and balanced assessment of the subject. ;-p Anybody who says 'boo' to the opposite is a heathen devil sodomite who buggers little boys and votes for Al Gore.

    --
    Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
  4. General problem? DID THEY TEST OTHER SITES?! by Seth+Finkelstein · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The article states:

    For example, the WAP address wap.sex.com can be viewed on cell phones using Verizon Wireless, Nextel Communications and Sprint PCS wireless Internet services. But the same URL entered into a Cingular Wireless device returns the message "your client is not allowed to access the requested object."

    Now compare this old business-week article

    But in France, Germany, and most of the rest of the Continent, the pickings are still slim. One trouble is that many phone companies are still in the beginning phases of WAP, and they block access to other service providers. This is known in the industry lingo as a ''closed garden.'' And for the time being, that garden has high fences. When I go to Germany with my French Web phone, I can only gain access to the Web through an international call to France, where I get a French weather report. This will change in the next year or two as phone companies adapt their Web services for roaming travelers.

    And this USA today article:

    Moreover, the speed hike only seemed to make a marginal difference over other wireless Web phones I've tried; I was still viewing text, and you must punch too many menu keys to access particular screens. And whenever I entered the Web address for usatoday.com, I received the following message: "WAP Gateway: Your client is not allowed to access the requested object."

    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)

  5. Re: OT pr0n!=bad for kids by ahoehn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All right, now this is getting slightly off topic, but possibly still just slightly, so: in response. Let me preface this by saying this is anecdotal personal experience.

    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.

    --
    Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
  6. Re:pr0n!=bad for kids by Witchblade · · 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.

  7. Re:I disagree. by GemFire · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Cell phone signals, like broadcast television and radio, travels through a medium owned by the public and that, to me, limits what they can censor (and it is censorship.) Unlike the phone line, it isn't really coming to the requestor over wires, but through a public medium. Yes, the questionable content does come to their equipment before it can be transmitted, but, by the time they know it as questionable it has already touched their equipment. If they choose not to send it back to the requestor, it is like a 'bleeped' television spot only on a private telephone call. I don't believe a telephone company has the right to that kind of control. There is a reason the Bells can't do it and I don't think a cell phone is that much different.

    --
    Don't just complain - DO something about it!