NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: [IP] Does AA VoIP usage violate the "federal Internet policy"
Lauren: Here's a Bloomberg news article re the "air porn" issue that was on TV news earlier today: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=conews&sid=aeAkdfULJJ1s The article points out that the flight attendants and passengers already have to deal with unsavory images on laptops...passengers bring it with them...so WiFi may not really change the situation. The flight attendants argue that AA filters VoIP so why not porn? Bob -- Come to CITI's 25th anniversary celebration, The International Summit on Communication & Media: October 30, Gala Dinner October 31, Conference The Next Generation of Communication - The Dawning of the Ultra-Broadband Era For more information go to: http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/citi/events/summit2008 Robert C. Atkinson Director of Policy Research Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) http://www.citi.columbia.edu office: 212-854-7576 mobile: 908-447-4201 E-mail: rca53@columbia.edu alt: bob@robertcatkinson.com On 9/16/08 4:10 PM, "Lauren Weinstein" <lauren@vortex.com> wrote: > I have not yet taken a "formal" public position on the issue of phone > calls from planes. This seems to be an issue that has only come to > a head with the threat of largescale phone usage -- it did not seem > to be a big controversy when restricted to (expensive and limited) > use of Airfone services. > > However, blocking of protocols is going to open up the same can of > worms we're dealing with now in the ground-based Internet. Will > people try to do high-traffic P2P from the air? Surely some will, > unwittingly if nothing else. Of more concern to me is word I've just > received claiming that American Airline flight attendants have asked > the airline to install filters to prevent passengers from viewing > "porn" (however that is to be defined) due to concerns for > passengers who can see other passengers' screens. That potentially > gets us into *all* of the controversies about Internet filtering > that I won't bother to rehash here. > > Fundamentally, my take on this is that if you're going to allow access > to the Internet on planes, attempts to control that access with anything > other than application-independent total throughput management is a > recipe for a real mess that the airlines don't really need right now. > > --Lauren-- > NNSquad Moderator