I wanted to post something brief, basically the web 2.0 equivalent of “I’m calling you from the airplane phone! tee hee,” but as it turned out, Southwest’s net nanny blocked this site.

I had no problem getting to sexiersexlessons.wordpress.com, however.

Southwest is testing satellite internet on four of its planes and I just happened to be on one today. The service was fast and steady but comes with the inevitable “to ensure a safe and secure experience for everyone, we block certain sites” disclaimer. I presume I could get to Sexier Sex Lessons either because the wordpress domain fooled the nanny or because I just soft-launched it two days ago (to celebrate the anniversary of the book!) and the bots haven’t caught up with it yet. (I’ll post an official announcement about it next week.)

Do they really think people are going to use airplane wifi for porn though? It’s not like we haven’t had the ability to bring x-rated material onto the plane for decades, with laptops and personal DVD players and PSPs and all kinds of other devices. You’d have to be extremely socially inept to surf porn while crammed into the cubic foot of space you’re allotted in coach. (By the way, I don’t think it counts as the mile-high club if you’re alone.)

If not porn, though, what are they protecting us against? I understand why they block large transfers like movies or big audio files, as there is a technological logic to that, but against content? I use question marks even though I’m not surprised. All it will take is one person to whine to the airline that their neighbor was looking at gory pictures from National Geographic, or playing a vividly violent video game, and the airline is going to be in some kind of public relations, if not legal, trouble.

It’s as insulting as it is annoying. Especially when one is attempting to research an article about vibrators, which one would have been doing if one weren’t too busy trying to tweet things like “I’m tweeting from the plane!”