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Boston Bans Boing Boing From City Wi-Fi
DrFlounder writes "The city of Boston has apparently blocked access to Boing Boing on the municipal Wi-Fi. This is possibly due to the popular blog's known Mooninite sympathies." Update: 4/22 13:11 GMT by KD : Seth Finkelstein did some research and posted an explanation of the blockage to his blog. "'Arbitrary and capricious' seems the relevant characterization."
Sheesh, just when you think that Boston's government might have learned its lesson from this whole debacle, now they're doing something even dumber and more reprehensible by censoring? What a disgrace.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
At least the people of Boston have a chance to throw the bums out in the next election. If you're encountering censorship by a cable company given a legal monopoly to "serve" a certain region, you have virtually no recourse unless such a thing was specifically planned for and written into the contract. I know that my city has no control over my cable provider's rates, allowing them to jack prices through the roof. I don't know if there is similar deregulation in the case of censorship, but I wouldn't be surprised.
In the end it's best to have as many choices as possible. So far as I know, having municipal wireless does not preclude the existance of DSL and cable providers.
Electric Monkey Pants
If they are blocking BoingBoing over the Mooninite issue, then they are censoring political speech critical of the regime.
If the project is funded with public monies, this will be an excellent case to push hard and loudly in court.
- Saying that you can't do something illegal is useless, because it is already illegal.
- Saying that you can't do something legal is wrong, because it is legal.
But really, what are the censoring for? I'm more worried about actual censorship than I am about a bunch of Adult Swim fans not being able to mutually mastubate over their pictures of Mumbles Menino.
Yep. from the graphic accompanying TFA. That's it.
What was the phrase? Don't know.
Why was it blocked? Don't know.
Was the Mayor of Boston involved. Highly unlikely.
Was any authority or elected official involved? Highly unlikely.
Really folks, there is utterly no information here except that some filter somewhere blocked one page on Boingboing's website.
Hardly the First Amendment case that's being suggested and debated.
Three Squirrels
I don't know how things work in Minnesota, but here in Boston we don't generally oust politicians for blocking Boing Boing. This will blow over, and there will be no repercussions. This is one of those situations where a politician can say "Even if someone has a problem with this, people will call them stupid for making a stink about something called Boing Boing."
-William Brendel
The part where that's actually true.
I'm no fan of guerilla marketing, and would've been happy to see them charged with, say, littering. But no; it was treated as a bomb threat. That's just stupid.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Is there anywhere left in the world where the government isn't equal parts hilarious and incompetent?
Yes. In some places the government is terrifiying and immoral. Now if the guy goes to prison, particluarly a max security prison(bomb making terrorist), then our government will have taken another step in the direction of terrifying. Getting beated and shanked because you designed an advertisement for a cartoon isn't hilarious, it's awful.
We are all just people.
It's not about boing-boing, it's about filtering on a public network. If the government is providing a public network, it must be open and unfiltered - because the existence of a free public network drives away alternative commercial providers - it may become the only network, or it may be the only network available to some users.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I can understand if a private ISP blocks content, although I don't agree with it. They are a private company and can do things like that, and I can choose not to do business with them. I would rather do without internet access than pay a company to block content.
In this case, it is a government controlled service, and thus clearly falls under free speech rights. Someone needs to bring the constitutionality of this under question in court.
I got nothin'
they don't need to make a federal case out of the matter. it's municipal wifi, but municipal government is still answerable to the citizens of boston as we live in a democratic society. they need to write to their city officials or take it to the city council directly with a petition. there should be municipal policies regulating the administration of public wifi access that prevents city officials from employing political censorship. it's the tax payer's wifi system, so ultimately they have control over how it's run.
Yeah but it's ultimately all about where the money comes from. If the government pays a private "enforcement" firm to be a Gestapo, it is still breaking the constitution.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
I feel the same way about open standards like TCP/IP, developed at public expense (I never would have consented to my money being wasted in this way). Instead of having a range of innovative, privately-developed protocols and networks (imagine being able to choose MSN's or AOL's innovate networking protocols), we are now forced to use a socialist, inefficient protocol like TCP/IP. It's been pretty much a disaster ever since.
Would you be OK with the postal services opening your mail and refusing to carry them if they didn't like their contents, or your phone company listening in to your calls and disconnecting you and/or refusing to allow you to call the same number again in the future based on what you're talking about?
What if those decisions are done by automated systems rather than humans - would you feel better because you knew that no actual person was reading your mail and listening to your phone calls?
You might still say "they're free to do it, and I'm free to take my business elsewhere", but what if everyone does it, and if you had no other choice but to agree to it if you want to be able to send letters or call people on the phone? You might say "I'm gonna encrypt my letters and scramble my phone calls", but what if your postal services company and telco decided that that was against their ToS? Would you still say "I'll just take my business elsewhere"? And again, what if everyone did it and you COULDN'T take your business elsewhere?
Your rights are only worth anything as long as they are actually protected, and that includes protection against non-government entities as well. And while you may argue that forbidding these kinds of things would impinge on the companies' freedom to conduct their business the way they want to, also do keep in mind that non-interference is an essential counterpart to freedom - your right to swing your fist ends where my face starts, and arguably, the same thing applies here.
As long as you just stand somewhere swinging your fist, it may make some sense to say that I simply shouldn't go near you in order to avoid being hit, but if you deduce from that that you're always free to swing your fist, then do consider a situation where I'm in a group of people who're all swinging their fists, with nowhere left to go. Is it my fault then that I get beaten up?
So, yeah, I agree that it does fall under free speech rights, but I also think that saying "if it were a private company, nothing would be wrong with it" is fallacious.
butter the donkey