Despite advertising the availability of free wireless internet access at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf coffee shops, the connection comes at the cost of "technical" discrimination. Philip Minton, who runs the Unite the Fight LGBT equality blog, couldn't get internet connection at home, so he went to the Coffee Bean on 3rd and La Cienega, in West Hollywood, CA, to do his blog posting from there using their free Wi-Fi service.
Coffee Bean is another chain coffee shop, like Starbucks, with free Wi-Fi service for customers to use while sitting around drinking coffee and doing work, just relaxing, or meeting with people. When Minton set up his computer and started to go through his news feed, accessing various other blogs, he got this message:
If you can't read it, it says that Pam's House Blend is blocked due to "sexuality." (Same thing for Towleroad among others.)
It is not uncommon to experience "technical" discrimination while trying to access newsworthy sites posting stories on LGBT issues from a computer at most work places or the library; simply containing the word "gay," "lesbian," "homosexual" and similar key words is enough to have the sites detected. As a result, those sites or articles are blocked for the same reason DNS, the Wi-Fi source for Coffee Bean, has described above -- "sexuality."
Minton has emailed the company to inquire whether or not the sites would be blocked had he typed in "heterosexual." Most techies can vouch that it is difficult to filter out pornography, or other adult content sites, without blocking non-adult LGBT sites. Minton brings up a good point in his blog post:
"But then we reach a deeper issue. Is the LGBT population feeding the popularity of LGBT porn, thus making the "homosexual" key word more equivalent to porn than a description of who we are (though many of us hate that word), thus justifying the wingnuts arguments against us about being simply a sexually driven population? Or is it simply so many people are in the closet and make these LGBT porn sites and their corresponding key words so much more popular than we possibly could on our own? (Again, another issue there.) Or is it just downright discrimination?
"Or is it all these things?"
Until he gets to the bottom of the issue, Minton asked his Unite the Fight readers to bear with him while he "[weeds] through the "technical" discrimination.
An answer was received: We only provide network admins with
the tools to block content on their networks, we as a company do not
block anyone for any reason. If this user (i.e.business) chooses to
block a particular type of content on their network, we cannot
interfere.
You however, as a consumer, have every right to
boycott their business for the way they choose to block content on
their networks.
SOURCE: Gay News Blog
Andrew Oldershaw (public relations for Coffee Bean) sent PH this email later in the day:
At approximately 3:00pm on Thursday we were notified by a customer using our complementary wi-fi service that two specific sites catering to the LGBT community were blocked from access. Those sites included Pam’s House Blend and Towleroad. After learning of the issue, our technical team researched the situation and took immediate steps to unblock the sites that were brought to our attention. It is not, and has never been, the policy of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to block Internet content or websites from our customers or members of the LGBT community. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf subscribes to an OpenDNS platform that incorporates a peer review component which allows users to flag particular sites they deem inappropriate. In this case, a small amount of flags triggered the system and the sites in question were blocked automatically. No web-content filter is perfect, but we are grateful to the customers who quickly brought this to our attention for resolution. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf supports diversity on all levels and values the community members of the areas we operate in. Our goal in offering free wi-fi service is to open communication and exchange of information, not to block information,” stated Tim Casey, Vice President of Marketing & Operations, International Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, LLC.