“Hey, can you get your porn?” ?he said.
What was first dismissed as a prank quickly escalated into an all-hands-on-deck mission for answers. Over a few beers, the roommates and their neighbors came together when they realized there was a problem.
Nobody could access their favorite porn sites — sites, up until then, they’d visited on multiple occasions. The same error message would consume the monitor: “This page has been ?blocked ...”
The roommates reached out to other tenants — at least four different apartments — who reported back the same issue: nobody could access their porn. Ritterling even commiserated with a guy on the bus back home to the apartment whose Internet access had befallen the same fate. They learned at least half the residents of Stadium Crossing, formerly known as the Varsity Villas, have been without access to some of the most heavily trafficked porn sites on the Internet.
“The porn blockade,” one called it.
Deciding on a systematic approach, they made a list. Ritterling and others clicked through more than two dozen websites.
PornHub.com, blocked. Xvideos.com, blocked. Xnxx.com, blocked.
They didn’t know who was blocking their porn, but they knew they had to say something. “Rimjobs for Molly” — the roommates’ endearing name for their Wi-Fi network — had to prevail.
“It’s the principle of it,” he said. “Sure, right now they’re blocking our porn, but looking down the line, who’s to stop them from blocking something else?”
Their minds flooded with speculation. Was this the work of a prankster? Or perhaps another party trying to limit the amount of bandwidth used?
They started with the apartment and wrote the management.
“Do you know anything about why all the popular free adult websites are suddenly blocked?” Dave Hilton, a roommate, wrote in a service request to Stadium Crossing. “Some might find this to be an embarrassing issue to inquire about, but it feels like an invasion of our privacy and we would like to see an end to it.”
Stadium Crossing management responded saying, in effect, it wasn’t us. Try Comcast, they suggested. Or ConsulTech, the local company that manages the network.
Relishing a 45-minute wait with Comcast, the roommates didn’t report the incident beyond the apartment management.
So where was their porn, and who was keeping it from them? A Stadium Crossing manager refused to comment on the record Monday afternoon, citing “personal reasons” and not wanting his name to be associated with a “porn piece.” When contacted by the Indiana Daily Student on Tuesday, ConsulTech sent a technician to the apartment complex immediately.
“We don’t do any type of selective filtering,” General Manager Derek Storvik said.
While he can’t be sure this early on, he said there’s reason to believe the porn sites themselves might be the root of the problem.
“A service provider of some sort hosting porn sites (has) blocked access to a subset of Internet addresses belonging to Stadium Crossing,” ?Storvik said.
The real question, he added, is why were these sites blocked in the first place? The answer is still not clear.
Storvik and his team are taking steps to ensure the blocks are removed. However, because the site administrators themselves might be implementing these blocks, he said, he’s not so sure there’s a permanent remedy.
There could be multiple reasons as to why a porn site administrator would limit access, Storvik said. One theory is even as simple as administrators perceiving an inordinate amount of site traffic from one location.
IU telecommunications professor Barbara Cherry, who’s on sabbatical, said another option in addressing these restrictions is contacting the Federal Communications Commission.
“The problem here is figuring out the specific location of the problem,” she said. “You don’t know which part involved is causing the issue.”
Right now, she added, it’s difficult to determine if this particular problem is solely affecting this apartment complex. The FCC could help determine whether or not the issue is more widespread.
Hilton sat in front of Ritterling, who was still surveying the different tabs at his desktop. The two previously came up with means to bypass the blocks using proxy servers.
“Luckily, this is just a hindrance,” Hilton said, “and we can get around it.”
“We shouldn’t have to, though,” Ritterling said, glancing up from his monitor.
Ritterling looked back at his desktop and clicked around a few times as he exited each window.
“Alright,” he said, “now I’m going to erase my browsing history.”
