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| Chilling Effects Clearinghouse > Weather Reports > Ohio County's Free Wi-Fi Shut Down Over a Single Complaint | 
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|  Ohio County's Free Wi-Fi Shut Down Over a Single ComplaintRebecca Schoff, Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, November 13, 2009 Abstract: The chilling effect in Coshocton County, Ohio, was in obvious evidence last week when a single complaint from Sony Pictures Entertainment caused the county to shut down its free Wi-Fi service. Coshocton County started providing free wi-fi service in the area around the county courthouse about five years ago. The Coshocton Tribune reports that the service was used by many. Out-of-towners with business near the courthouse could access it from their cars. County Sheriff's deputies could file traffic or incident reports from their cruisers. During county festivals held near the courthouse, vendors could use the network to process credit card transactions. The free municipal wi-fi provided Internet access in a way that directly benefited the public. Last week the county's ISP, itself described on Freakbits as "an award-winning, non-profit organization serving Northern Ohio by connecting public and non-profit institutions to their fiber-optic network," received a complaint from Sony alleging a single illegal download of a film. In response, the county shut down the service. The county is described as "cash-strapped" and, while their IT director has researched software filters that would prevent illegal downloads, county commissioners doubt that the cost to implement the program would be "justified for the free service." The incident illustrates the unique pressure put on free municipal services of this type. With public funds scarce, it's understandable why the county would move to avoid legal threats in the quickest and cheapest way possible. Wendy Davis of the Daily Online Examiner points out that no evidence was established that the allegation of an illegal download was true. She cites the paper published by University of Washington computer scientists last year, demonstrating that legal uses of BitTorrent technology unrelated to the sharing of copyrighted material can attract false, unfounded DMCA takedown notices for a range of reasons, including bugs in software. Coshocton County says that it will investigate to try to determine what triggered the complaint from Sony, but in the mean time the county wi-fi is dead. We owe a hat tip to Techdirt on this one, where Michael Masnick notes that the MPAA, when interviewed by the Coshocton Tribune on the issue, "doesn't seem concerned at all about the collateral damage." UPDATE: Michael Masnick has an update on the story: an embarrassed Sony has asked the county to put its wifi back up!
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