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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)."
"Likelihood of being fired because the town lost its shirt in 'MPAA vs. All Humanity' on your watch" > "Likelihood of being fired because you shut down the wi-fi hotspot".
Incidentally, this is why cops get to use chemical weapons and soldiers don't...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Harbor
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, it's an example of elected officials doing their job poorly.
Deciding to which public services the county does and does not want to offer is a legitimate function of government. Choosing to end one is not a "punishment".
Wow, talk about misrepresenting the facts
Well, it is boingboing after all, which is the 'Net's equivalent of Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate": the editors post inane stories in the most inflammatory language possible, the crowd all goes apeshit for a short time, and then moves on to the next thing, having done nothing, accomplished nothing, and learned nothing.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
ianal - I think you're right, since ISPs are protected by safe harbour provisions, and the MPAA has to file lawsuits against individuals, even if it's a jane/john doe discovery thing. Of course, if they can't identify who did it, which the article seems to indicate, they can't sue anybody, but that never seems to stop them from baseless threats and bluster.
(Or for that matter, lack of accuracy doesn't slow those rabid vultures down either...)
While that clears up the mechanics, it still points to the MPAA being too powerful since it is an example of a private company being able to control a public government though simple fear of ending up in the crosshairs.
When governments fear corporations, we have gone through full circle though capitalism and can arrive on the other side of communism.
Well, it is slashdot after all, which is the 'Net's equivalent of Orwell's "Two Minutes Hate": the editors post inane stories in the most inflammatory language possible, the crowd all goes apeshit for a short time, and then moves on to the next thing, having done nothing, accomplished nothing, and learned nothing.
Fixed that for you.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
well, yes and no. Normally during a war, all bets are off - if you can't keep, in peacetime, to the minimum standards expected during wartime, you're doing something wrong.
FGD 135
So the MPAA is clearly then allowed to treat civilians worse than people being occupied in wartime by any country that has signed the Geneva Convention?
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention only applies to "protected persons."
Art. 4. Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.
In short, a state can punish its own citizens collectively, at least as long as there's no actual war -- and all you smarty-pants who think the "War on Drugs" is an actual war are impressing no one, least of all an international criminal court. (It's worth nothing that the US doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC either.) This is why, no matter how much I still resent her, my 4th grade teacher isn't a war criminal.
It's also worth noting that turning off a service one party provides for free to multiple third parties is not generally recognized as a punitive act towards the third parties in the US. "Punishment" is reserved for actions taken directly against an individual or group. So closing a soup kitchen for health code violations is not "collective punishment" of the homeless nor is imprisoning a father collective punishment of his family.
Lastly, I think you've got a really sad sense of entitlement and pathetic, comfortable ignorance if you think that cutting off free Wi-fi at the park is equivalent to the kind of collective punishments that happen during war. Read up on Stalin's Order 270 or Sherman's March to the Sea.
And then stop your whining about Wi-fi. The MPAA is being a bunch of jerks, but they're not engaging in war crimes. People need to get some goddamned perspective.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The problem is that Coshocton is a pathetic little hick town east of Columbus, OH. The primary product that it produces is poor people and poorer people. The last time I went there, the high points of my trip were a blizzard from DQ and leaving. The reason they didn't fight the case is because the town is SO freaking poor that they didn't stand a chance. It's sad too because for such a little podunk town, they actually did something smart and progressive: muni wifi. Their reward for doing so? The MPAA Whambulance.
I wonder which MPAA employee did the drive-by download.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.