Following up on last month’s post, The latest on airline porn and filters from Bloomberg:
American Air Attendants Urge Filters to Bar Web Porn
By Mary Schlangenstein
Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) — American Airlines flight attendants are urging the world’s largest carrier to filter its in-flight Internet service to block access to pornography and other Web sites the workers said were inappropriate.
Attendants and passengers raised “a lot of complaints,” and leaders of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants broached the issue with management, without making a formal request for filters, union spokesman David Roscow said today in an interview. He didn’t give specifics about any objections.
In-flight Internet use poses a new challenge for airlines as they balance their cabins’ close quarters with the push to offer more amenities to win business and boost revenue from sources other than fares. AMR Corp.’s American began selling access on some cross-country flights on Aug. 20.
“It’s a tricky door to open,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center in Washington. “Where do you draw the line once you start policing the information your customers can access?”
As I pointed out earlier, one concern this article doesn’t address is the very real possibility that forcing female flight attendants to be the porn police can create a hostile work environment. There is a well-known case, Adamson v. Minneapolis Public Library where a group of librarians who were subjected to porn-viewing library patrons won a $435,000 judgment. I have the full complaint from the librarians here, which is not reading for the faint of heart. FYI, my legal reference page has every major legal document associated with all US filtering-related cases.
– David Burt
[...] can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
[...] American announced their filtering last month. I previously blogged about this here. IDG has a story that gives the civil liberties group perspective: [...]