WhotSpot is a Montréal company that specializes in wifi solutions for shops and businesses who want to provide internet to their customers. They will get a wifi router setup for them and nearby laptop users can then see a web page where they can pay for the internet service. WhotSpot also allow the business to include ads and other “information” in the webpage.
In their path to give complete control, they are now marketing ProtectStop, a hardware box that will censor block unwanted websites and content. In its pitch, the company wrote about violent, gambling and porn websites. However, a business can censor any website or any category they want in pratice
Experience tells me that users who want to access unwanted content will always find the way to do it. Even worse, it emulates them. Content providers will also create new tools to go around ProtectSpot. In their examples, they mention students who use BitTorrent or porn. But everyone else in the room knows that students will then go at great lengths to hack/access these services. This might just be a personal opinion, but I believe information control is a thing of a past. You either give full Internet Access and responsability to your users; or you don’t provide Internet access at all.
Note: That said, I also think there are always marginal markets that are suitable for this product, such as ultra religious groups (cf. Outremont), sensible R&D centers, or military sites.
