MPAA Shuts Down Town's Municipal WiFi Over 1 Download

nam37 writes with this BoingBoing snippet "The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town's municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie. Rather than being embarrassed by this gross example of collective punishment (a practice outlawed in the Geneva conventions) against Coshocton, OH, the MPAA's spokeslizard took the opportunity to cry poor (even though the studios are bringing in record box-office and aftermarket receipts)."

Comments

Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[Saxerman]

Wow, talk about misrepresenting the facts. I hate the way the MPAA is using copyright law as much as the next digital rights activist. But, for the record, the MPAA didn't take down the network. They just sent their usual infringement notice to the ISP, who then forwarded it on to Coshocton County. The county then made the decision to shut down the wifi service, they weren't ordered to by any judge or MPAA executive/lawyer/asshat.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117273

Geneva Conventions

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to be pedantic.. but the fourth Geneva Convention (which OP was referring to) sets forth protection for civilians in times of war. Last I checked, there is not a war going on in Coshocton, OH and the MPAA is not a sovereign authority (as much as it might like to be). I always cringe when people reference the Geneva Conventions like this in such an overly dramatic and misrepresentation way.

Non-story

[Dog-Cow]

Another troll by Cory. The WiFi was using a single IP address and NAT. The one connection was shutdown, that's all.

Re:There must be something more

[h4rm0ny]

Actually, it's more a case of something less. This is another Cory Doctorow nonsense-piece. What appears to have happened is that the town had a set up a single shared wifi network running from a single connection which they allowed anyone to use. The MPAA sent a letter saying that this connection was being used for downloading copyrighted material without permission and the Sheriff's office panicked and shut it down.

FOX News doesn't distort the facts for their agenda as much as this guy has. (Well, not all the time, anyway).

Re:There must be something more

[h4rm0ny]

I've found more information on this as well, actually. Far from being a whole town, the wireless network was a free network broadcast for ONE BLOCK around the county courthouse.

So real situation: Someone opens up a wireless network with open access in one block of the town. Someone (very probably) did something illegal with it. The people who pay for the connection get a letter saying there is illegal usage being made of it and decide to shut it down.
The Slashdot Headline and Doctorow Blog:MPAA shut down entire town's Municipal WiFi against their will. Contravention of Geneva Conventions.

This is utter garbage and the editors if they were doing their job would post an update on the story right now.

Re:There must be something more

[h4rm0ny]

Not to be an ass or anything, but if you just dug up this information in the time since your previous posting, perhaps you could share the links with the rest of us?

No offense is taken by a request for citations. The Coshocton Tribune has a much more detailed article here. It details the area covered by the wifi point (the block containing the County Courthouse), the typical usage of the open network (from around a dozen people a day surging up to a hundred during county fairs held there) and the facts that they had no direct connection with the MPAA, but that Sony Pictures sent a notification of illegal usage to their ISP which then passed it on to the customer who decided to shut the network down. They're response - for a small town, under-resourced considering a network that is a useful but hardly critical public resource, actually seems reasonable. "Let's turn it off and think about what we can do." They're considering whether they need to spend a few thousand dollars (a lot of money for them) on filtering software. (I'd personally counsel them against that as it's merely throwing good money after an unguaranteed solution) Who's to blame for this? Well certainly not the council, and to be honest, not really Sony Pictures which sounds like they just sent one of their standard "you're doing illegal stuff, we know it, please stop and play nice" letters. So really, I think the most to blame for the withdrawal of the free service is the twat that decided to abuse their free service by helping himself to some copyrighted material.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. As you can see, a lot more facts and a strikingly different conclusion to the original "OMG! MPAA are depriving towns of Internet and Geneva Conventions are being violated" blog post.