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

There must be something more

[transparen]

I find it hard to believe that they would have shut down the Wifi simply because of a *possible* lawsuit.... Maybe they didn't really want the WiFi after all?

Re:There must be something more

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"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".

Re:There must be something more

[meerling]

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...)

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

[TyroneShoe]

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.

Re:There must be something more

[T.E.D.]

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

Ooooooh. Now that's a low blow.

Re:There must be something more

[SpaceLifeForm]

I wonder which MPAA employee did the drive-by download.

Re:There must be something more

[HeronBlademaster]

Obviously you didn't RTFA.

Their "Municipal Wifi" covers a one block area around the courthouse, which probably just means the block that the courthouse is on. That's hardly "municipal". Maybe you can call a single open access point "progressive", but come on... TFA is obviously blowing things way out of proportion.

Furthermore, the MPAA didn't even ask them to shut it down. They simply notified the ISP of an illegal download, the ISP notified the access point operators, and then the AP operators shut down the access points. Basically, the politicians panicked.

Re:There must be something more

[kcbrown]

Their "Municipal Wifi" covers a one block area around the courthouse, which probably just means the block that the courthouse is on. That's hardly "municipal".

Well, for that particular town, one block probably does cover the whole town!

:-D

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.

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

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[TubeSteak]

I RTFA and I can't be the only one who sees a discongruence between "an entire town's municipal WiFi" & "the 300 block".

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[pavon]

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".

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[radtea]

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.

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[jythie]

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.

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[Captain Splendid]

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.

Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network

[Imrik]

They are one and the same, the 300 block is the only section of the town serviced by the municipal WiFi.

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.

Re:Geneva Conventions

[Anonymous Coward]

Incidentally, this is why cops get to use chemical weapons and soldiers don't...

Re:Geneva Conventions

[vekrander]

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?

Re:Geneva Conventions

[Anonymous Cowpat]

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.

Safe Harbor

[spun]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Harbor

Re:Safe Harbor

[bl968]

Only applies to content hosted on their network. If the ISP is not directly hosting the content on servers they own, then they have no requirement to take it down. When the content is hosted on the customers system the ISP has no legal liability regardless of claims to the contrary, Why? Because the they can take legal action against the person directly at that point, and they have a legal obligation to minimize the affects. That would be like me forcing LEVEL3 to take down Comcast because one of Comcast's customers is hosting a file for download on a machine outside of Comcast's direct control.

512. Limitations on liability relating to material online
(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications.-- A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the provider's transmitting, routing, or providing connections for, material through a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, or by reason of the intermediate and transient storage of that material in the course of such transmitting, routing, or providing connections, if--
(1) the transmission of the material was initiated by or at the direction of a person other than the service provider;
(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider;
(3) the service provider does not select the recipients of the material except as an automatic response to the request of another person;
(4) no copy of the material made by the service provider in the course of such intermediate or transient storage is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to anyone other than anticipated recipients, and no such copy is maintained on the system or network in a manner ordinarily accessible to such anticipated recipients for a longer period than is reasonably necessary for the transmission, routing, or provision of connections; and
(5) the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.

Notice there is no absolutely no requirement to terminate the user.

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.

In a sense, yes, but that's hyperbole.

[Valdrax]

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.

This is Cool!!

[Virtucon]

Make Friends and Influence People Now!

Here's how you do it.

You don't like your neighbor's barking dog? No Problem, just War Drive their WAP and then download movies. Next, send
an "anonymous tip" to the MPAA. Next thing you know, it's a takedown letter and a demand for money. Now they'll have to take
that little dog to the pound because they can't afford the dog food anymore.

I've seen the other comments and one more analogy.. The Roads will need to be torn up because somebody sped down them while fleeing the scene of a crime. We don't know who the criminal was, but he was fleeing.

Re:This should've never come out of the firehose..

[Imrik]

I suspect that you are mistaken, the wireless hotspot was capable of handling more than a hundred users at once and the county is considering purchasing filtering hardware and software so they can bring it back up.

In other news...

[radpole]

Bank robbers used the local highway to getaway this morning. The highway has been closed until further notice.