Muni WiFi Censorship in Metro L.A.

Culver City is one of many municipalities in metro Los Angeles offering some form of free wifi network. Culver City’s system has been thought of as the first, city-owned free system and other cities including Burbank, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood followed suit by providing free public wireless access in localized areas, primarily to promote tourism and the business districts.

But it turns out Free wireless access doesn’t exactly mean “free access.”

Culver City, which, incidentally, is home to no fewer than three motion picture studios (including — yup — Sony), has implemented filtering that blocks users on its municipal wifi network from accessing p2p sites, porn, and other “questionable content.” The incriminating “nannyware” in this instance is CopySense.

Mack at LAVoice has a bit more on this here.

And Sacha Meinrath at MuniWireless.com warns:

While the telecommunications battle of 2006 has been all about Network Neutrality, a storm is gathering for 2007-8 to be the war over Digital Rights Management.

Originally published August 24 2006 in the Set-Top Cop blog.