Commentary

The world’s leading mobile telecommunications company considers UK Gay News and at least one other gay news website to have “adult” content and is barring access, it has emerged.

UK-based Vodaphone, which has interests around the world including a joint venture, Verizon Wireless, in America, puts a block on access to this site – and on the highly-reputable Gay City News in New York – deeming the content to be “adult” in nature.

The matter came to light when a reader tried to access this site from a Vodaphone broadband connection ... and access through a mobile (cell) phone.

A spokesperson at the Vodaphone press office in Newbury explained this afternoon that with a lot of children now using mobile telephone technology to access the internet, web sites had “to meet a content standard”. Customers, she explained, could “opt-in” to access adult websites.

The Vodaphone website says that to opt-in, a subscriber has to be able to prove his or her age – and must be 18 or over.

UK Gay News uses a Vodaphone mobile phone and a test last night confirmed access was barred.  Though this was the very first time that we had attempted to go online from a mobile phone, we phoned the company and the block was lifted immediately.

No one could argue with this philosophy, given that there are many pornographic sites on the web.

However, in the case of both UK Gay News and Gay City News, one fails to see how either can be deemed to be “adult content” sites.

In the case of UK Gay News, the vast majority of the content is links to articles of interest to lesbian, gay or transgender people in some of the world’s most respected newspapers, ranging from The Guardian and The Independent in the UK to the Globe & Mail in Canada and the Washington Post in USA.

Additionally, the countries in the Middle East that block access to many gay websites appear to have no objection to this site.  Our server statistics show that the site is accessed regularly from within all countries.

The suspicion is that Vodaphone is using third party software that blocks websites with the word “gay” in a url – this is something that UK Gay News has in common with Gay City News.

Certainly, a lot of American software used to restrict access to pornographic sites arbitrarily block all gay sites.  This came to light last summer when we tried to access UK Gay News from a computer terminal in a local authority venue – only to find that access was denied.

Council officials, on that occasion, quickly apologised and rectified the matter – explaining that it was the American software used and the word “gay” was on the “hit list”.

Vodaphone promised to investigate the matter and to “get back to you as soon as possible”.  Watch this space.