The MPAA runs amok

[pauldun170]

A SMALL TOWN in the former British colony of Virginia is paying the price of not standing up to the MPAA.

Coshocton, which is in Ohio and does not have a great tradition of standing up to authority, decided that it would be a wizard wheeze to turn control of its muncipal network over to the movie companies' cartel. After all it did not want any nasty 'pirates' in its fine little town, it wanted only plain decent folk who buy lots of gingham and bake lots of apple pies.

Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie.

We are not talking a big network here. Sometimes it handles 100 people a day during busy times. The closure of the network means that the Coshocton County Sheriff's deputies can't complete a traffic or incident report and out-of-town business people can't park in town and use their laptops to connect to the Internet.

Because the whole network has a single IP address, the town did not know who the pirate was, so the MPAA demanded that the network be shut off.

The case is fairly typical of what has been happening on a wider scale across the world. The MPAA and its music industry cousin the RIAA have been running around, lobbying about the perils of 'piracy' and screaming that they'll be forced out of business and Western civilisation will fall unless peer-to-peer filesharing is stamped out or everyone even suspected of copyright infringement is hounded, fined, booted off the Internet or all of the above plus criminalised.

Rather than engage their brains and tell the entertainment companies along with the RIAA and MPAA to go forth and multiply, politicians seem to want to roll over and give the entertainment industries everything they want.

France was prepared to switch off Internet connections to those the MPAA and RIAA said were 'pirates'. It was only when it was pointed out that this was against the constitution without due process of law that the government backed down, partly.

In the US, the RIAA has been litigious and made a fool of itself by dragging children, the elderly and dead people into court to face 'piracy' charges.

In other words we are not dealing with nice people, we are dealing with bullies and stick-up artists, much like common muggers except they wear suits. We elect people to protect us from such things. Society is supposed to collectvely stand up against the overly aggressive to see that weaker people can thrive and make their contributions as well.

The shutting down of a small town network is a microcosm of what the entertainment industry would do to the Internet if we give it control. Rather than protecting us, lawmakers are happy to give in and switch off whoever the RIAA, MPAA and their cronies point to. In this case it was a whole town, but why not all the users of an ISP, a cable firm, mobile carrier or telecom?

It is clearly time for the body politic to tell these clowns to go away. Any sympathy they might have attracted in their war against 'piracy' they have squandered by their greedy, self-serving, neurotic and paranoid behaviour.

If David Cameron promised that the next time he got an RIAA thug or MPAA goon in his office yammering on about Internet controls that he would tell the berk to get out or be thrown out, I might even vote for him. I might even vote for Gorden Brown if he told the music and film industries to sling their hooks. µ

http://www.coshoctontribune.com/arti...WS01/911100305
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/mp...-of-free-Wi-Fi
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...mpaa-runs-amok

[pdog]

Apparently the story is hyperbole. MPAA sent a standard cease and desist letter to the city's ISP. ISP forwarded to city. City decided to shut down network because it couldn't police the network.

Nothing to see here, move along.

[karl_1052]

Originally Posted by pdog

Apparently the story is hyperbole. MPAA sent a standard cease and desist letter to the city's ISP. ISP forwarded to city. City decided to shut down network because it couldn't police the network.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Hyperbole or not, the MPAA and RIAA are just a bunch of hot air lawyers.

Since they are providing such a great service(keeping Simon Cowell rolling in cash), I think we should start a collection, so they can all be the first space tourists...


...without a spaceship.

[Avatard]

Nothing to see? I see cunts in suits being bullies. I say we fucking kill them.

The MPAA and RIAA are just terrorists with lawyers.

[Rider]

Originally Posted by Avatard

Nothing to see? I see cunts in suits being bullies. I say we fucking kill them.

The MPAA and RIAA are just terrorists with lawyers.

100% Truth.

[pdog]

Terrorists kill people. They don't bother with lawyers.

The MPAA are just doing exactly what any of us would do if in their position: trying to get all the money they can by protecting their copyright.

We need revised copyright laws but Congress will never do it while lobbyists can buy them off. I'm amazed at the number of problems in this country that simply boil down to campaign finance reform and ensuring that politicians do what is right for the country, not themselves or family.

Originally Posted by Avatard

Nothing to see? I see cunts in suits being bullies. I say we fucking kill them.

The MPAA and RIAA are just terrorists with lawyers.

[Smittie61984]

Originally Posted by Avatard

Nothing to see? I see cunts in suits being bullies. I say we fucking kill them.

The MPAA and RIAA are just terrorists with lawyers.

Didn't you want the government to set up free wi-fi? If some Hollywood lawyers will shut down a town for something it doesn't like, imagine what our government will do.

People could use their own wireless internet which is easily available from AT&T, Verizone, T-mobile, Metro PCS, Sprint, Comcast, et al and download whatever they want with little worry. But that would require us taking on our own personal responsibility.

[Avatard]

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

Didn't you want the government to set up free wi-fi?

Uh, no...but I did point out that other countries are doing just that.

Of course, the underlying reality is that this may help such countries kick our asses in this information age...but don't put words in my mouth.

Originally Posted by Smittie61984

If some Hollywood lawyers will shut down a town for something it doesn't like, imagine what our government will do.

People could use their own wireless internet which is easily available from AT&T, Verizone, T-mobile, Metro PCS, Sprint, Comcast, et al and download whatever they want with little worry. But that would require us taking on our own personal responsibility.

I think you need to log on using your credentials to use those services, and your IP (private subnet addy anyhoo) is thus easily retrieved from the DHCP server logs.