Cory Doctorow is a popular blogger. xkcd refers to him often (usually wearing goggles and a cape and riding a hot-air balloon in the blogosphere). He’s fairly intelligent when it comes to technology, or so I am led to believe…
… but I’m beginning to wonder. Today, he posted a blog entry in which he claims the following:
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).
That sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? To read that summary, you’d think that these facts were true:
- The town runs a municipal wireless network providing internet access to its thousands of residents.
- The MPAA initiated a lawsuit which resulted in the network being forcibly shut down, preventing thousands of people from accessing the internet.
- The MPAA took the opportunity to whine about lost profits.
- The MPAA was thus violating the Geneva Conventions.
As it turns out, none of those things are true. Doctorow actually links to his original source, though he apparently didn’t read it. I’ll summarize the sequence of events for you:
- A free wireless access point is set up at the county courthouse. It covers a one block area. Regular users number in the dozens.
- A user used the free connection to download a copyrighted movie, and the MPAA noticed.
- The MPAA notified the ISP.
- The ISP notified the county.
- The county shut down the free access point.
- The MPAA, when asked to comment, said that piracy is something the movie industry fights every day, and that it’s a common occurrence in towns big and small; the spokesperson never mentions profits one way or another.
Even a cursory reading of the Coshocton Tribune article would have shown Doctorow that his summary was a) grossly inaccurate and b) highly inflammatory.
I realize that he has a great desire to fight the MPAA and RIAA’s lawsuit-happy copyright enforcement tactics. I do too. But flooding the internet with deliberate misinformation doesn’t help anyone.
And to the Slashdot editors – come on, guys, can’t you even do thirty seconds of fact checking before you post articles? It’s so common for you to post articles without fact-checking nowadays that I don’t believe anything I read on Slashdot until I read the source articles myself. It’s almost to the point that I may as well stop reading Slashdot entirely.