COSHOCTON — A free service enjoyed by hundreds has been shut down due to illegal activity conducted by one individual.
“It’s unfortunate that one person ruins it for those who use the service legitimately,” said Commissioner Gary Fisher.
About five years ago, the county made a free wireless Internet connection available in the block surrounding the Coshocton County Courthouse at 318 Main St.
It was disabled last week after someone used the wireless local area network address to illegally download a movie.
The county’s Internet Service Provider — OneCommunity — was notified by Sony Pictures Entertainment about the breach, and the county’s Information Technology Department was in turn notified by OneCommunity.
Elizabeth Kaltman, vice president of corporate communications with the Motion Picture Association of America, said movie piracy is something the industry fights everyday.
“It’s a very, very common occurrence all across the U.S., in towns big or small,” she said.
Part of it could be due to a generation that’s grown up with computers and the Internet.
“They’re used to instant access and instant gratification,” she said. “They have the philosophy ‘if it’s there, I can take it.’”
It’s not true. There are many sites out there offering illegal movie and music downloads, but there’s also a growing number of sites that offer video streaming legally. Those are available on the MPAA’s Web site, Kaltman said. In addition to the recognizable names such as Netflix and Blockbuster, Disney Video, Fox on Demand, Cartoon Network and others have joined the instant download move.
“There are a growing number of ways to get the information they want legitimately,” she said.
The MPAA focuses most of its efforts on catching the source of the movies, like pirates who illegally use a camcorder in a theater.
“We target piracy at its source,” she said. “We really focus on keeping the product out of the market in the first place.”
Illegal downloads would be prosecuted as a civil matter, she said, and could be subject to fines up to $150,000.
Mike LaVigne, IT director, said the number of people who access the Internet using the connection varies widely, from perhaps a dozen people a day to 100 during busy times such as First Fridays and the Coshocton Canal Festival.
It’s used by Coshocton County Sheriff’s deputies who can park in the 300 block and complete a traffic or incident report without leaving their vehicle. Out-of-town business people can park and use their laptops to make connections.
During festival times, vendors find it a convenience to check the status of credit cards being used to make purchases, LaVigne said.
Because it’s a single address used by many people, it’s difficult to tell who made the illegal download, although the county plans to investigate the matter .
Each of the 270 to 300 computers in the regular county system have password protected secure log-ins, and so could be readily identified if illegal activity had taken place at one of those locations. Its firewall also prevents access to illegal sites, said Commissioner Dane Shryock.
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.
Commissioners questioned whether the investment would be justified for the free service, but LaVigne said it could be put to use on the entire county system to monitor activity.
“It would be beneficial to both realms,” he said.
This short-range service is entirely separate from the wireless broadband being deployed throughout the county by Lightspeed.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment