X
Home & Office

Flight attendants call for ban of WiFi porn in the skies.

I kind of laughed out loud when I heard this morning that flight attendants, concerned about the arrival of in-flight WiFi, are calling for a ban on passengers watching pornography in the skies. Why laugh?
Written by Sam Diaz, Inactive

I kind of laughed out loud when I heard this morning that flight attendants, concerned about the arrival of in-flight WiFi, are calling for a ban on passengers watching pornography in the skies. Why laugh? Because I've never been an HBO subscriber, I had never seen The Sopranos - so, thanks to DVDs, I'm starting to watch now. What better time to get in a few episodes than the cross-country flight I took this past summer, right? So I settled in, fired up the laptop and launched an episode. Wouldn't you know... the opening scene featured some topless women at the bar where Tony Soprano "works."

I was so embarrassed - a woman my mother's age was sitting across the aisle from me. I shut off The Sopranos and popped in the South Park DVD instead (yeah, I know, like that's any better...)

I can't help but ask - is this something that needs a formal ban? I mean,  I would hope that civilized adults on an airplane would have enough common sense to refrain from firing up a porn site on an airplane. Others definitely could see it - whether it's the flight attendant, the grandma sitting next to you or the toddler behind you who keeps peeking over the seat. Flight attendants shouldn't have to do any more policing than they already do. The drunks are already enough work.

For the record, I'm against filtering the WiFi Web at 35,000 feet. I know that VoIP calling - at least for Delta - will be blocked but I'm cool with that. Can you imagine the in-cabin roar if even one-third of the passengers start talking into headsets? But filtering content? What's next? YouTube? There's some pretty rough videos there, I suppose. How about MySpace? One might argue that some of the images that people post can be pretty revealing.

It's starting to sound pretty silly, don't you think?

Previous coverage:

Will Wi-Fi fly with travelers? (Video)

Delta rolls out WiFi across U.S. fleet

Editorial standards