MPAA Shuts Down Town's Municipal WiFi Over 1 Download 323
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)."
There must be something more (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There must be something more (Score:4, Insightful)
(Or for that matter, lack of accuracy doesn't slow those rabid vultures down either...)
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From the tone of the article, it seems like the courthouse maintained an unprotected access point. The article talks about it being available in the streets immediately surrounding the building. There is a huge leap from that to being an ISP.
Oh, I don't know.
There is a safe harbor (17 USC 512(a)) that protects service providers from being liable for indirect infringement on the basis that one of their users directly infringed, and the service provider (by providing Internet service) helped. The definition o
Re:There must be something more (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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TFA links to the source [coshoctontribune.com], which does confirm your parent post's analysis.
I guess reading TFA is taboo.
Anyway, the original article doesn't mention the MPAA being involved in the shutdown at all. By all appearances, the MPAA notified the ISP, then the ISP notified the county, then the county shut down the access point.
Re:There must be something more (Score:5, Informative)
No offense is taken by a request for citations. The Coshocton Tribune has a much more detailed article here [coshoctontribune.com]. 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.
Re:There must be something more (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Bear in mind that politicos can get voted out very easily, so tend to be nervous types when accused of something that smacks of scandal. (Widespread fraud is one thing, but accusations in the press of sponsoring pirates or spending tax dollars in bringing down Hollywood... No sane politician would take that kind of risk.)
Also bear in mind that most politicians are technically ignorant and are unlikely to know the difference between aiding and abetting in an electronic crime versus being a common carrier.
Fin
Re:There must be something more (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There must be something more (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Well, for that particular town, one block probably does cover the whole town!
Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network (Score:5, Informative)
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 [mediapost.com]
Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network (Score:4, Interesting)
I RTFA and I can't be the only one who sees a discongruence between "an entire town's municipal WiFi" & "the 300 block".
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I RTFA and I can't be the only one who sees a discongruence between "an entire town's municipal WiFi" & "the 300 block".
But telling the truth isn't quite as sensationalist! I mean he even said that this was against the Geneva Convention! THE GENEVA CONVENTION!!!!1111ONE
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They are one and the same, the 300 block is the only section of the town serviced by the municipal WiFi.
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I am going to guess this had something to do with certain officials owing a favor or two to something relating to this:
"This short-range service is entirely separate from the wireless broadband being deployed throughout the county by Lightspeed."
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Where did you see that? I don't see it on the article.
Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed that for you.
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How do the unicorns fit into your rant?
Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Yes, a local government organisation caved in due to a single threat from a highly feared organisation.
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Uuum, you apparently don't no a thing about psychology. No problem, I did think all my life, that humans are not the weak spineless obeying losers that they are.
Most humans will with a high likeliness, obey whatever you tell them to do. Even torture and murder a person.
As long as they think it must be right, because someone who dominates them with his strong (view of) reality, thinks it's right.
So it is an entirely expected strategy for intelligence people and similar professional spin doctors, manipulators
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Denying people a public service such as Wifi hardly seems like "Collective Punishment".
They were trying to take themselves off the liability list. Something illegal going down? Don't aid it.
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Denying people a public service such as Wifi hardly seems like "Collective Punishment".
Someone who was deemed to be doing something that is disapproved of had some favorable condition, and it was taken away in order to discourage the behavior that is disapproved of. That is the definition of negative punishment.
And this punishment was imposed on a collective of people because of the actions of a single person, so that seems to imply that it was a collective punishment in the same way that p -> p in logic.
So yes, it was collective punishment by definition.
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No, it was shut down to prevent the city being sued; if they didn't had cut off the access to the downloader (as this is the only safe way to do it, as MAC filters can be easily bypassed), the MPAA could sue them based on DMCA law.
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Denying people a public service such as Wifi hardly seems like "Collective Punishment".
They were trying to take themselves off the liability list. Something illegal going down? Don't aid it.
I heard there was someone speeding down the 300 block!
The city tore up the street because of one person misusing it. They did not want to aid criminals.
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Sure pulling the plug is easier, but, really, how hard would it have been to just stop routing packets to that MAC address?
Brilliant. That downloader will never be able to get a new Mac address. Unless he types one in.
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If they were dumb enough to use a public, city-owned router for illegal activity, you really think they'd be smart enough to set a new address? Smart enough for that sidestep but not smart enough to encrypt the torrent traffic or use an anonymous proxy or any of the other dozens of common sense moves to avoid broadcasting what's being downloaded?
I'm sure all the other citizens they shared a network with appreciated the use of discretion to avoid minimal disruption of service.
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Sure pulling the plug is easier, but, really, how hard would it have been to just stop routing packets to that MAC address?
Technical issues aside (it's easy enough to fake a MAC but we'll assume that this isn't the issue here) it doesn't take an enormous amount of foresight to see that in so doing you're essentially going to spend the rest of your life playing whack-a-mole at the behest of the MPAA.
Re:Wasn't the MPAA who shut down the network (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
okay (Score:2, Insightful)
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And what sort of punishment do you think would be appropriate for you after you'd deprived someone of water for expressing an opinion you didn't like?
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Contrary to popular belief around here, you can't actually die or contract serious disease from a lack of internet access. To deny water to residents where functioning facilities exist and where wells cannot reasonably be dug would be tantamount to punishment.
It's not like the city banned all ISP's from servicing local residents either. And city-wide wi-fi isn't really intended to be the primary ISP for residents. It's there so students can get online on the bus, tourists can look up points of interest o
Safe Harbor (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Harbor [wikipedia.org]
Re:Safe Harbor (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Notice there is no absolutely no requirement to terminate the user.
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Eh? What?
Uhm, what exactly did you think my purpose was in bringing up the safe harbor provision?
I am very interested in the thought process that lead to the conclusion that I was arguing that the ISP was liable or the customer should be terminated.
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How is municipal wifi different from any commercial ISP? Would a commercial ISP shut itself down if it found one of it's users engaging in illegal activity? No. Of course not. And why not? Because of the safe harbor provisions, no ISP is liable for the illegal activity of its users. Just like the phone company isn't liable when someone calls up a hit man and orders an execution.
Not to be insulting, but your argument simply makes no sense. It shows that you don't understand the purpose of the safe harbor pro
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I would be all for that, actually.
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The making guns illegal part. Spines and brains irrelevant.
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It doesn't "need" to be repeated that ISPs are not common carriers, but if it feels good to do so, please continue to repeat it.
Your efforts toward establishing logically coherent groupthink are appreciated.
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in a nutshell, common carriers have to deliver (almost) anything you ask them to deliver, so ISPs really don't want that designation because they would like to maintain the right to throttle or deny service to anyone for any reason (telephone networks and the postal service are examples of common carriers.)
ISPs are shielded under the safe harbor provision of the DMCA which basically says that you'll take down infringing content on your network once you're provided notice, or else you end up liable.
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By your logic we should shut down all the roads and confiscate all the cars. After all, some people use them to smuggle drugs...
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Yeah, companies are known to fight for their clients...
Maybe we need TPB owners to run our public Wifi networks.
Reciprocity (Score:2)
Let the town pass an ordinance that requires explanation of the facts and recommendation of content from less onerous publishers in every place MPAA affiliated content is sold or performed. Imagine a local movie theater showing foreign and indy films and recommending one when someone asks for a ticket to Transformers.
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That sounds like a good way to kill the entertainment businesses in your town and watch the tax revenue move across the city limits to the town next door or unincorporated county.
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Yeah, almost as bad as killing off business of all the vendors that have been relying on WiFi to process credit cards.
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I don't want a lecture from my local government on what I should be watching every time I buy a ticket to something I do want to see. Local government wastes enough tax money without taking it upon themselves to start cultural policing. If I want to watch a film, it's not wise for anyone to lecture me about it. I expect you would feel the same if you thought about it.
Geneva Conventions (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Geneva Conventions (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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If you don't like it, seek out politicians that are taking MPAA money and get them out of office. Then it's less likely lawmakers will turn a blind eye toward them when they go nuts.
Good thinking, except it will be the candidates who have the most financial backing who will likely be elected to replace them.
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As the entire issue is completely internal to the United States, the international community has no jurisdiction whatsoever.
A pity though that the only folks who DO have jurisdiction have already been bought.
In a sense, yes, but that's hyperbole. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [bentcorner.com] or Sherman's March to the Sea. [wikipedia.org]
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.
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But we ARE in a war. A couple actually. The war on terror, the war on drugs... Probably more.
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The Korean War, technically (gogo, almost 60 years now!)
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Last I checked, there is not a war going on in Coshocton, OH
You think not? We are all, every one of us, not spectators, oh no, but soldiers in the war for freedom! Be it in the high desert of Afghanistan, the cities of Iraq, or the wi-fi spectrum of Coshocton, Ohio, we will fight the enemies of freedom wherever they raise their malignant heads. We will fight them on the internets; we will fight them in the courtrooms; we shall never surrender!
This post brought to you by a ghost named Churchill.
Re:Geneva Conventions (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
actually, we are at war. (Score:2)
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Don't confuse misrepresentation with stupidity. Nam37, like most slashdotters, considers himself a legal expert.
What is it about geeks that make them think they understand the law better than lawyers? Usually to their detriment, as Randal L. Schwartz, Shane Becker, and Hans Reiser can all testify. Or they could, if they could admit to their own stupidity.
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Last I checked, there is not a war going on in Coshocton, OH
Well actually the US is a country at war. Fighting TWO wars, as a matter of fact. I know the point you're trying to make - that part of the Conventions was mostly about rounding up people in a town and shooting them for being Belgian (I don't see a problem with that but never mind), not using that well known grade-school teacher tactic of "if someone doesn't tell me who did this, the whole class is getting detention!" but sti
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But where are the front lines on the Global War on Terror(TM)? No, I don't agree with that reasoning, but given the spurious shit that our government has done in the name of national security, don't be surprised to see that argument come from a government spokesperson.
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War on common sense? Isn't that like declaring war on Troy?
Non-story (Score:5, Informative)
Another troll by Cory. The WiFi was using a single IP address and NAT. The one connection was shutdown, that's all.
Help Me Understand .... (Score:2)
What responsibility or culpability does the bar owner / bar tender have if someone leaves their bar totally drunk and kills someone on their way home?
I know that bars and such are private entities, but I fail to understand how the municipality would think that they are responsible for the actions taken by those using their goods or services. I say let the MPAA come after them - prove
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"What responsibility or culpability does the bar owner / bar tender have if someone leaves their bar totally drunk and kills someone on their way home? "
The bar owner has money, assets, property, and a business that can be seized if sued. Usually the drunk doesn't.
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What responsibility or culpability does the bar owner / bar tender have if someone leaves their bar totally drunk and kills someone on their way home?
In the litigation-happy US, I know that bartenders have been successfully sued for just that. But then again, crooks can sue the owner of a car they stole because the brakes are faulty.
A criminal case, however, is another thing entirely.
Common sense, however, would say that no one forced the pe
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The doctrine of joint and several liability governs the allocation of damages among those liable for the commission of a tort. The the users of a wifi connection or the other customers of an ISP are not liable for a wrongful act committed by just one of them. "joint and several liability" has nothing to do with this.
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case law
One of the HUGE flaws in the legal system.
Just because some idiot judge made some decision X years ago, now like little sheep, everyone has to cite that case. Effectively this gives judges the power to "make" laws, or at least an interpretation of it. Instead of the system working as DESIGNED, where each and every person gets judged on a CASE BY CASE basis, considering the changing times and technology, the individual nuances of this particular case: nope,
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Well, there's two problems with what you're saying:
First, that's not how case law works. Only decisions from certain (higher) levels of court are binding on future decisions (and if the legislature sees case law heading in the wrong direction they can head it off by changing the underlying law).
Second, the system was not designed to have every individual case decided independently. Aside from being a waste of time, that would lead to a less just system in which two people have identical circumstances but
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Similarly, is the city really culpable for the actions of one user of their public access wifi network?
What we deserve (Score:2)
This should've never come out of the firehose... (Score:2, Informative)
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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.
i hope they apply it to their business next... (Score:2)
hack for great justice (Score:2)
Let's get some of them illegal pr0n bots and install them on MPAA computers, see how they like dealing with the shit end of the stick.
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Let's get some of them illegal pr0n bots and install them on MPAA computers, see how they like dealing with the shit end of the stick.
No, remember if you really want to fuel the fire, it needs to be a "competing" organization, like the RIAA and BSA. Therefore, forget porn. Fill their hard drives with a truckload of MP3s, along with a few dozen illegal installs of Adobe CS4 and stand back.
Uh, how exactly did the MPAA "find" it? (Score:2)
Am I the only one here wondering just how the MPAA was able to locate a "lone" downloader sitting on a municipal wi-fi network feeding an end-user count that would rival my local library in the middle of nowhere, USA?
I guess I'm just a little more concerned as to just how in the hell they found this and which half-dozen Constitutional Rights/Amendments did they trample over or ignore to get the information?
I mean it's bad enough when you've got lawyers representing organizations with more money than God sud
This is Cool!! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Use nuclear device to kill mouse. (Score:2)
This is great example of "Using a nuclear explosion to kill a mouse". The keyword is singular mouse and not many mice.
MPAA doesn't care about collateral damages and they sounds like a Dick Cheney and Don Rumfield method of war.
Geneva c onvention? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet another zealot can't oppose bad behavior without exageration. I have to wonder if the moron who submitted this understands the term "human rights violation". Suffice it to say the Geneva Convention's prohibition on collective punishment was not written out of concern that you might not have the internet connection you want.
It's not that you shouldn't want the **AA's abuses to stop. It's that you shoudln't be trivializing real crimes against humanity by comparing them to weak-ass shit like this.
That is all.
Original article gives the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
LaVigne has done some homework and found a program that would prevent the illegal downloads from happening in the future; however, it would cost the cash-strapped county about $2,900 to implement, $2,000 for equipment and then $900 annually for the filtering program
There you are then. The MPAA pays for the hardware and the software subscription. The cost to the MPAA and its members is readily offset by the potential millions upon millions of profits that could be lost from illegal downloads from this small town's one-block-radius municipal's WiFi connection. Everybody wins!
$2900 to block sites ??? (Score:2)
FTA
LaVigne has done some homework and found a program that would prevent the illegal downloads from happening in the future; however, it would cost the cash-strapped county about $2,900 to implement, $2,000 for equipment and then $900 annually for the filtering program.
Man have I got some stuff I would love to sell them. Like my amazing crypto software that hides all of your important data in a jpeg!!!
Only one way to stop things like this (Score:2)
The cartels rely on the fact that 95% of the public who see this story, will have one of two reactions.
a) They won't care. It will simply be irrelevant background noise. "It doesn't interfere with my ability to get up, get coffee, go to a meaningless job for 16 hours, come home, eat, sleep, and then repeat, does it? In that case, it's not my problem. I've got other things to worry about."
b) They will have swallowed the cartels' PR kool aid, and will make the assumption that the cartels are in the righ
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In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Bank robbers used the local highway to getaway this morning. The highway has been closed until further notice.
That's why you don't build centraliced networks (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't build munchipal networks in a centraliced fashion, you make meshed networks which are in the hands of their users. That way there is no way anybody could turn them off. Maybe someone would decide to not offer Internet anymore, but turning of the network as a whole is impossible.
You can get cheap routers, install the Freifunk firmware and off you go.
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Geneva Convention applies to international conflict bud, not private corporations.
Actually IANAL but:
International treaties and conventions ARE the law of the land if your country is a signatory, and said law must be respected by all persons - physical or judicial. Corporations are NOT above the law.
There's a little clause in the US constitution that says:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall