• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, November 11, 2009

Hollywood executives have made a lot of noise about wanting ISPs to implement "three strike" policies for online piracy, but haven't made much headway with network providers.

Now, however, a town in Ohio has taken matters into its own hands by instituting a one-strike policy -- against itself.

Coshocton County recently shuttered its free Wi-Fi after receiving a notice about alleged copyright infringement on its network, the Coshocton Tribune reports. Sony Pictures had told the town's ISP, OneCommunity, about the alleged piracy, according to the newspaper. OneCommunity then told the county's IT department. The county responded by axing the five-year-old service, which had been available near its courthouse and was reportedly used by 12 to 100 people a day.

Why the county felt it necessary to disconnect its Wi-Fi remains unknown. The Motion Picture Association of America says it didn't ask for the network to be shuttered; the county hasn't yet responded to requests for comment.

But even had the MPAA asked for the Wi-Fi to be discontinued, the county would have been under no obligation to comply. What's more, there's no indication that the piracy allegation is even true. Consider, last year University of Washington computer scientists published a paper detailing how their use of BitTorrent resulted in hundreds of takedown notices that wrongly alleged copyright infringement.

Coshocton officials aren't the only ones to overreact recently to a notice of copyright infringement. Two weeks ago, Brooklyn Law School's chief information officer responded to such allegations by telling students that the school would turn over the names of suspected downloaders to copyright holders.

The following day the school changed its position and told students that it wouldn't disclose anyone's identity without a subpoena or court order.