Delta to censor in-flight Wi-Fi

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. -- Flying domestically on at least one airline will be like traveling to China or Saudi Arabia in one respect: Internet censorship. Delta Airlines plans to block what it considers inappropriate Web sites on its in-flight Wi-Fi service.

The move represents a victory for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which has been pushing for such a policy on all airlines.

The policy may prove controversial, as it puts the airline in the position of acting as a kind of morality police in determining which Web sites are acceptable and which are not.

Another problems is that content filtering software is flawed, and could block sites that wouldn't offend anyone. That means some people may pay in the case of Delta $9.95 or $12.95 for Internet access (depending on the length of the flight), and not be able to access some legitimate sites.

While potentially offensive Web sites will be blocked, passengers will continue to be allowed to bring onboard pornography and other content in other media, such as in print, on DVD and in other formats. Passengers will continue to be allowed to carry laptops and cell phones with pornographic material loaded on the hard disk or in cache.

In fact, nearly all airports actually sell pornographic magazines inside the terminal. The airlines allow this because they trust passengers who buy these magazines to use discretion and avoiding reading them in-flight. Why is the Internet different? Why are people who pay for magazine-based porn more trustworthy than people who pay for in-flight Internet access?

Is this reasonable? After all, the majority of passengers probably won't shell out the money for Internet access at all. Are those that do really going to sit there in what is essentially a public place and surf pornography?

Is the filtering really a preemptive overreaction to a problem that may not even exist? Let me know your opinion in the comments area.

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