Canterbury Cathedral Blocks Porn on WiFi Network

CANTERBURY, Kent—The way the Daily Mail sees it, "The church has long warned against indulging in the pleasures of the flesh. And now Canterbury Cathedral has blocked access to porn websites in a bid to keep worshippers from temptation." Clearly, cathedral officials were fed up with the competition. Common wisdom has it that the Brits are engaged in the unprecedented censorship of adult and other content because of concern for the kids, but stories like this reveal that they're actually peeved that porn is more popular than pews. So, typical of the island nation's attitude toward all things unpleasant, they instituted a new rule blocking the stuff. However, the new restrictions only apply to the new café that just opened, and in that sense Canterbury is very much following in the footsteps of Chester Cathedral, which was "forced to shut down its public WiFi after it was revealed patrons could access hardcore pornography as they enjoyed a cup of tea and a slice of cake in the café after their visit," reported the Evening Standard. A spokesperson for Canterbury explained to the paper, "It's really a safeguarding process. What we wanted is to provide free WiFi for members of the public, but we didn’t want salacious or debasing sites being accessed.” According to the outfit that manages the WiFi system, most such networks—up to 58 percent of them, in fact—do not have filters installed to prevent the sort of lascivious surfing that provides so much delight to the otherwise devout. That said, the company, Purple WIFI (indeed!), also stated that only about 10 percent of users of the non-filtered networks even try to access dirty sites. Whether that makes the whole to-do much ado about nothing remains in the eye of the beholder.