Gil was stuck in an American Airlines Admiral’s Club for 5 hours waiting for his flight back to L.A., so he tried to access the South Park website to help pass the time. What he got instead was the screen here, saying that the site had been blocked because it’s considered “tasteless.” We’ve seen the same message at a Cosi restaurant in NYC. Thanks, companies, for protecting our delicate sensibilities! We’re going to go get the vapors now.
Here’s Gil’s account:
I’m stuck in the Admiral’s Club in Narita Airport for another 5 hours in Japan because AA cancelled my flight to LA. To kill time I figured I catch up on my South Park episodes and watch the last few shows. I type in http://www.southparkstudios and settle in for some quality comedy and satire, but then I get the attached message from AA’s network nannies.
Tasteless? Who decided that? What makes this almost sublimely ironic is the picture of the naughty Japanese lady cop they use as an image for the blocking page. They apparently consider that tasteful.
I went through to see what else they block but couldn’t find anything else. Apparently serial killing (Dexter), selling dope (Weeds), trashy evening soaps (Desperate Housewives), and crappy South Park wannabees (Family Guy) are considered acceptable.
Just for the hell of it, we went to the Fortinet website (fortiguardcenter.com) and requested a review of their classification on southparkstudios.com. Their drop-down list of possible categories for web content is amusing all by itself—it’s a compendium of Things That People Take Offense At, from abortion to homosexuality to marijuana to tobacco.
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@BuddyGuyMontag: See, everything was fine until the pubes came out.
And Panera used to block Deadspin through their Wi-Fi. Although I lodged a protest, and it’s since been lifted. Funny how they didn’t block the other blogs in the Five Percent Nation of Gawker that I checked (and no, Fleshbot wasn’t one of ‘em)…
While the airline may be utilizing the software, there is a chance that they may not be the ones that requested for South Park to be blocked. A number of these filtering packages work based on updates – this may be based on default settings provided by Fortiguard.
While not a great example, my office uses SmartFilter – we get our updates for the filter on a regular basis. There was a site that was blocked one week, then unblocked the next, based on a request made directly to SmartFilter.
Additionally, is it possible that they use the same filtering software for their wireless access as they do for their employee machines? It may be more convenient and cost effective to use the same thing on both networks, even if it does mean that someone is going to be upset that they cannot access a site.
You people just do NOT get it, do you?
Yes, indeed, they can do what they want. It’s THEIR network.
That is not the purpose of this freaking website, though. The purpose of it is to encourage business to improve by encouraging the consumer to not to patronize businesses that don’t offer acceptable service.
You all complain that Comcast is a shitty company, but your complaints aren’t directed at illegal activity for the most part. Comcast can fail to arrive at the indicated times and dates, all it wants to. There’s nothing illegal, as far as I know, about not keeping appointments. However, this is – legal though it might be – extremely disrespectful and onerous for the consumer and when they have a choice, the consumer should be encouraged not to use Comcast, so long as it keeps this shit up and is the least advantageous choice.
If American Airlines intends not to allow a person to access the sites that he desires – so long as he’s not making lewd bawdy material available to minors – then I fail to see a reason to encourage anyone to use AA or a reason to spare them the bad publicity.
But, yes, I agree, they have the right to do this, but that is so so so so so very irrelevant.
Btw did anyone have a look at the list why websites can be blocked ? If anyone would take this list seriously … they can block the whole internet cause there is always something …
Other than that : Yes its legal, doesnt mean its ok.
I like how they phrase it, “…website is in violation of YOUR usage policy”.
They assert that you knowingly agreed to their policy, and are willfully trying to violate it! Gotta love that implied consent.
@12-Inch Idongivafuck Sandwich: Its probably behind the same content filter that the corporate internet access goes through. So its probably not some conspiracy to limit access, but rather AA not wanting to spend any more money than absolutely required to provide internet access to these club rooms.
There again, they could have gotten complaints about someone going to porn sites in plain view of other people waiting there and decided to put the content filter in place to avoid further complaints. Sometimes the best policy is just to block that kind of stuff out, than having to deal with lost business from what used to be a loyal customer.
I think they’re just trying to play it safe by putting up a broad internet filter so people don’t look at porn where others can see it. I guess if he were committed enough, he could have gone through a proxy, which he’d need anyway to see South Park outside of the US.
Whenever I go to the airport, I just find the nearest pay internet hotspot, and then figure out how the ad pages structure their URLs. Then, I just type in the site I want as though it were an ad. Amazingly, it works perfectly. I can watch youtube videos and everything.
I just stayed at a Hilton in Manchester, New Hampshire, where my own site, advicegoddess.com was blocked. I’m a newspaper columnist in papers across the country. Their problem? The word “pedophilia,” which I was not using to advertise to kiddie diddlers, but to criticize the Catholic church for protecting molester priests.
I do have mobile broadband, but I was waiting for a friend and using the hotel’s business room computers.
Nowhere does this post say that he paid to access the network. He was given free network access.
The assertion that he paid to use the internet service in the AAdmiral’s Club should be that he INDIRECTLY paid. To use the AAdmiral’s club you have to either be a member, pay a daily-use fee or buy a business-class or higher ticket for your flight that day. No direct fees for the internet service, but direct or indirect fees paid to use the AAdmiral’s Club which offered the service.
@Amy Alkon: Websense is amazingly moronic in their filtering. There’s little or no sense of context, and since they’re a private company selling their “service” mostly to people who would err on the conservative sides (executives) rather than the somewhat more libertarian geek professionals, no one really calls them on it who has the ability to directly drop their service. My employer used to use their service but has discontinued it because of the number of false positives.
@Redwraithvienna:On the “there’s always some reason to block a website” note . . . . One time, my mom had emergency surgery at 10p.m. the night of some statewide elections. I wanted to see the outcome of some of the elections, and the hospital’s surgical waiting room had some computers with internet access. So I go and pull up the state’s *Secretary of State* website – or, at least, I tried to. It was blocked!
Happened to know the hospitals VP for yadda yadda, because he was a member of a committee I took minutes for, etc. Mentioned it to him, and he was pretty surprised. Then he thought about it, and said that the company they hired to do filtering had a tendency to block every single website that had any kind of streaming video whatsoever. I suggested that he might pass on to them that something ending in “.gov” was probably safe for the kiddies.
Fortunately, have had no need to sit in that waiting room since, so I don’t know if it’s still an issue.
I wonder if anybody Googling Paris Hilton would be welcomed by the same disclaimer… Zing!
@jenl1625:
hehe clever … and i kinda doubt that it was solved
funny thing is … i never had this problem in europa (where i live, work, and travel most).
Maybe i was just lucky or dont surf the “forbidden” sites … (although i know me and i really doubt that).
Probably a cultural thing again …. funny though.
That short skirt isn’t tasteless at all. (It’d be a different matter if she were a cartoon.)
@TheManator: You mean the WGA hates non US IP Addresses. That was what the whole writer’s strike was about. The agreement the studios came to with the WGA (Writers Guild of America) was that any streamed episodes of shows could only be streamed to American IP Addresses, which is asinine I know since you can torrent almost as easily if you’re on your own system on public Wi-Fi anywhere in the world.
Still, the PC he was accessing the site on was AA’s machine on AA’s network, they make the rules.
Just be thankful it wasn’t Southwest Airlines! The way they treat
passengers, the only web site that would be allowed would be the
Amish Network.