He's Watching That, in Public?
On a recent morning at the main public library here, dozens of people sat and stood at computers, searching job-hunting sites, playing games, watching music videos. And some looked at naked pictures of men and women in full view of passers-by.
The library has been stung by complaints about the content, including
explicit pornography, that some people watch in front of others. To
address the issue, the library over the last six weeks has installed 18
computer monitors with plastic hoods so that only the person using the
computer can see what is on the screen.
“It’s for their privacy, and for ours,” said Michelle Jeffers, the
library spokeswoman. The library will also soon post warnings on the
screens of all its 240 computers to remind people to be sensitive to
other patrons — a solution it prefers to filtering or censoring images.
It is an issue playing out not just at libraries, but in cafes and gyms,
on airplanes, trains and highways, and just about any other place where
the explosion of computers, tablets and smartphones has given rise to a
growing source of dispute: public displays of mature content.
The subject can put personal media on a collision course with personal
morality. This is an era, after all, that celebrates people’s ability to
watch what they want, when they want, but it also forces bystanders to
choose whether to shrug, object or avert their eyes.
Some legislators battle against public displays of pornographic content,
at least on the roadways. A bill is pending in the New Jersey
legislature to criminalize the playing of obscene material in cars —
say, on seat-back DVD players or in party buses — that could viewed by,
and distract or offend, others on the road. State Senator Anthony Bucco,
who sponsored the bill, said people who view such videos in public
“don’t care what anybody around them thinks.”
Similar laws have passed in the last decade in Tennessee, Louisiana and
Virginia, and one failed last year in Pennsylvania, according to the
National Conference of State Legislatures.
An antipornography group, Morality in Media,
has in recent months launched a “no porn on the plane” campaign, and
has contacted most major airlines to argue that they should commit to
policing what people watch.
The group took up the cause after its executive director, Dawn Hawkins,
was on a flight in January and noticed a man in the row in front of her
looking at images on his iPad of naked women whipping each other.
She complained to the flight attendant, who told her he was powerless to
force the man to stop, she recalled. The man eventually turned off the
images, but Ms. Hawkins continued to press him on why he was looking at
those images in public.
She said a woman then came up to her and said, “Be quiet, nobody cares.”
“The fact of the matter is nobody did care,” Ms. Hawkins said. “I
couldn’t believe people didn’t care that someone was watching
pornography in public. I couldn’t believe society has come to this.”
So said the last sane citizen of the Roman Empire.
For its part, Delta Air Lines says that it does not allow people to view
“offensive content of any kind,” but also said that flight attendants
are trained to make case-by-case assessments depending on circumstances
and concerns of other passengers.
A spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants said the issue is
a bit of a “gray area,” handled case by case, adding that its members
want to avoid offending passengers or playing the role of censors.
One reason the issue is so thorny is that not everyone agrees on what
might be considered offensive. That is the case even within Morality in
Media, where Ms. Hawkins said people should also be careful with public
viewings of violent content.
But that’s not the view of the group’s president, Patrick Trueman, a
former Justice Department official in charge of prosecuting child and
adult pornography. “It’s not the same situation with violence,” he said,
noting that graphic war scenes from a movie like “Saving Private Ryan”
can provide a powerful history lesson.
Some people develop their own sliding scales for what is acceptable.
At Cafe Ponte in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, the
owner, Bruce Ponte, 53, regularly sees people looking at Craigslist and
other sites listing personal ads that can include naked photos. There is
a parochial school next door, and he fears a parent will complain that
he should restrict what people look at on their computers. He does not
think he will.
“This is an Internet cafe,” he said. “People come here to surf. Am I supposed to do something about that?”
In fact, Mr. Ponte acknowledged that he himself sometimes sits at his
cafe and surfs the hookup sites, and occasionally sees naked photos. But
there are other times he takes a stand against what he considers a
major public nuisance: patrons talking too loudly on their cellphones.
He tells them to take it outside.
“They’re bothering everybody,” he said.
He offers free Wi-Fi, like a growing number of cafes and restaurants.
There have been a few reports of men being arrested over the last year
for viewing pornography on their computers at McDonald’s. McDonald’s
declined to comment for this article. Starbucks said it does not censor
what people use its Wi-Fi for but reserves the right to ask someone not
to view material that might offend patrons or employees.
Some people choose to act as their own censor. Lewis Goldberg, 42, a
partner in an investor relations firm in New York, occasionally watches
shows like “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones” on his iPad when he works out
at the gym. But he fast-forwards through sexual or particularly violent
scenes.
“There’s a woman jogging behind me on the treadmill and I don’t want her
to fall off,” he said. “I’m bringing my media into a public space, and
it’s part of my responsibility in a civil society.”
Christi Chidester, 32, who works in communications for a federal agency
in San Francisco, was in the main library here recently when she walked
past someone watching hard-core pornography. She complained to the
librarian and was told there was nothing that could be done.
Ms. Chidester said she has since spent a lot of time thinking about the
issue, and while she wishes the library would create specific zones or
rooms for those Internet users, she now likens seeing pornography on
someone else’s screen to hearing someone curse in public. It is going to
happen sometimes.
Others fiercely defend the rights of people to watch whatever they want
in public. When Ms. Hawkins, from Morality in Media, posted a YouTube video
describing her encounter on Delta, she was bombarded with angry e-mails
from people telling her to mind her own business.
“People said, ‘Just look away,’ ” she recalled. “Their argument is that people can do what they want. This is America.”
So said the last Roman as the Visigoths burned it all down, raped his woman, and bashed in his skull.
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