Inflight porn: should and can the airlines stop it?

Unlike Rush Limbaugh, my big problem with pornography is when it’s pushed on someone who doesn’t want it. On an airplane, it’s virtually impossible to read a pornographic magazine, watch a XXX movie, or scroll through photos on a “porn” website without imposing the pornography on other passengers.

Before continuing, I want to be clear. I’m not an attorney. I am a business person with practical experience in workplace law, and in law concerned with conducting business with the public.

I don’t know if any of our readers have run into problems of pornography while in flight. I have. I’ve sat across from a man reading a hardcore “porno” magazine not far from children in the cabin. I’ve also sat next to a man with a hardcore “porn” DVD playing on his laptop. To make matters worse he wasn’t using headphones. Rick Schmidt of Mexico City, like many other people, suggests, “you can turn away and ignore it.” I can attest from personal experience, that really doesn’t work.

Fortunately for me, flight attendants took care of the problems. The man with the “porn” magazine finally packed it away when the flight attendant threatened him with removal at our intermediate stop. The other man shut down his laptop after the flight attendant requested he stop the movie.

Before anyone wraps themselves in red, white and blue, to declare that viewing pornography while inflight is an exercise of their “protected speech,” let’s review the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We can see that the First Amendment is about the Government impairing free speech, not the public, nor business. In fact, the First Amendment has precious little application in private settings.

Current airline regulations have provisions which have been used to limit offensive behavior, and in my opinion, can be used to prohibit inflight pornography. Airline “Contracts of Carriage” contain more than regulations about reservations, tickets, fares, luggage, refunds and flights. They contain specific requirements for customers, in the “Acceptance of Customers (Passengers)” provisions. Often included in “Contracts of Carriage” is language which states the airline may refuse to transport a passenger, or even remove a passenger from the plane if certain conditions are met, such as:

Conduct which is or has been known to be disorderly, abusive, offensive, threatening, intimidating, or violent, or whose clothing is lewd, obscene, or patently offensive (Southwest Airlines)

Refusing to comply with instructions given by Carrier’s Employees (Southwest Airlines)

Creating a threat to the comfort and/or safety of other passengers or employees (US Airways)

We all remember the Southwest Airlines’ case of Kyla Ebberts and her traveling attire. Whether or not Southwest Airlines’ judgment was correct, she was removed as a passenger because the Airline deemed her clothing was not in conformance with their “Contract of Carriage.” The courts have consistently sustained the provisions of the airlines’ “Contracts of Carriage.”

It would appear that the airlines have the power to set appropriate limits on “speech,” and thus prohibit inflight pornography from being viewed or listened to.  I believe such a prohibition is both an appropriate and necessary standard for airplane passengers, considering the lack of passenger privacy available in an airplane cabin.

There are two problems for the airlines in prohibiting inflight pornography: setting an appropriate and meaningful standard, and enforcing it.

I suggest the airlines use the same internal rules they’ve devised for self-censoring their inflight entertainment. I’m sure we’ve all noticed “inflight movie” edits. I’ve seen movies on flights which had so many cuts that I stopped watching the movies. Most cuts merely took out offensive language, while others removed nudity. The airlines should apply their preexisting “visual” standards for passengers’ movies, photos, and printed materials. Requiring the use of headphones for all audio, good, bad or otherwise, would eliminate the need to censor movies due to offensive dialogue. It would also prevent unnecessarily raising the decibel level of sound, pleasant or not, in already noisy plane cabins.

To keep inflight Internet based pornography out of airplane cabins, groups such as Girls Against Porn want the airlines to heavily filter out Internet access to all pornography. Internet filters are problematic, as most filter out far more content than intended. The National Coalition Against Censorship correctly points out, “Despite some manufacturers’ claims of improved technology, filters still must operate by ‘keywords,’ and they block massive amounts of valuable information about politics, religion, public health, and myriad other subjects” along with their intended material. At public libraries, Internet censorship by filter concerns me a great deal, but on a flight of a few hours, not so much. I believe the lack of privacy in airplane cabins trumps the need for unfettered access to the Internet. Passengers will still be able to get their email, stock reports, general news, and other information. I would hope the airlines would make every attempt to minimize over-filtration.

I’ll bet flight attendants won’t be happy about this suggestion, but for passengers’ magazines, and laptop-viewed movies, I believe they will need to be the final arbiters of the airlines’ pornography standards and enforce them, like any other airline standard. I would prefer this was not the case, but I don’t see a way to avoid it. Fortunately, I believe, flight attendants won’t have to exercise that enforcement very often, as most passengers seem to have good sense about their inflight entertainment.