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Cingular Filtering Porn From Wireless Web?
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?
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
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?
--
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
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.
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.
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.
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
I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans.
;-p Anybody who says 'boo' to the opposite is a heathen devil sodomite who buggers little boys and votes for Al Gore.
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.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
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.
Now compare this old business-week article
And this USA today article:
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)
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.
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.
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!
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?