No YouTube On Panera Bread’s Menu

I’ve just stumbled upon the strange fact that Panera Bread’s content filter will not let you see anything from YouTube, the homemade-video site, among other things. My laptop and I were having lunch there yesterday – I ordered their turkey artichoke sandwich, while Mac fed on the nutritious free WiFi -- and we noticed that what was supposed to be an embedded YouTube video on another site showed up as a blank space.

Well, shoot happens, and sometimes shoots don’t happen; the Internet is very much a work in progress, and video is still in the pre-standard phase. But with the URL available, curiousity drove us to slap it into the command line, and this rather creepy warning appeared:

“The SonicWALL Content Filter Has Blocked this site.
“Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category"

Sure enough, today we checked back from another i-café (this free wireless thing having freed us from our electronic cave at home), and bada-boom: there was the verboten yet entirely non-controversial video.

Panera is obviously keen on protecting their diners from any unappetizing content -- more likely, protecting themselves from lawsuits from parents whose teens might be tempted to go to there for a bagel and Suzy Creamcheese.

But all of YouTube?

SonicWall can be quite Church-Lady about the content they allow through. Some friends have a completely innocent site about "sound healing," which nonetheless was blocked in the Forbidden Category of "Cult/Occult," a classification which of course does not play in Peoria. To be fair, which I’m frankly not inspired to be in this case, they invite you to submit a rating review “if you feel this site has been blocked in error.” Just don't go to Panera expecting to find anything spicy.