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McDonald's - Source: ONE News
McDonald's is being accused of homophobia after it blocked gay websites from its new free Wi-Fi service at its restaurants.
People trying to access the lifestyle website GayNZ.com discovered they could not find the site, among others, and the website challenged the fast-food giant - which offers free Wi-Fi access in 132 of its restaurants nationwide - to review its access policy.
"McDonald's must by now be able to find a more sophisticated way of judging the suitability of actual content for your restaurants rather than just blocking out wholesale an entire site which provides much valuable and family-friendly lifestyle information and service."
There appeared to be no consistency in McDonald's policy, GayNZ.com said.
A NZ Aids Foundation site was not blocked but Family Planning, Rainbow Youth, Agender and others were.
However, McDonald's said it was a family restaurant chain, and as part of offering the Wi-Fi service, its policy was that content must be of a family friendly nature, or suitable for a child to view.
"Because of this, access to a number of websites is blocked, including access to GayNZ.com, gambling, tobacco and adult mature content websites," a McDonald's spokeswoman said.
"You will also appreciate that there are inevitably teething problems with the introduction of a new service and getting our filtering process right is one such issue.
McDonald's said it was happy to review websites on a case by case basis, if customers believe that sites have been unjustifiably blocked.
However, all links and advertisements must also be acceptable.
Family First backs McDonald's stance
Family First NZ says McDonald's should maintain its "family
friendly" policy and continue to ban websites containing explicit
sexual material.
"Websites containing explicit sexual material and images should
continue to be banned by the family restaurant as the welfare and
protection of children and families from offensive and
inappropriate material is paramount," says Bob McCoskrie, National
Director of Family First NZ.
"The issue is not about the type of group. It is about the content,
and material which is adult-rated should be blocked in a public
setting like McDonalds. The same type of filtering should be
present in schools and libraries, and McDonald's are to be
congratulated for putting families first."
Some of the websites which they have blocked have been blocked for
good reason, McCoskrie said.
"People desperate to access this material will have to do it in a
private setting through their own server.
"Organisations who are complaining about the actions of McDonald's
simply need to clean their websites up to make them family
friendly," he said.
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