Culver City, Calif., Implements Filtering Technology on Public Wireless Network

Culver City, California, the first Los Angeles municipality to offer the public a free all-access wireless Internet system, has now installed a program to filter illegal and problematic content from their network. The decision to implement filtering technology was the result of a CopySense network analysis that disclosed the fact that Culver City's open network included some illegal trading of copyrighted music, movies and other video content, including pornographic videos and access to pornographic Web sites.

Culver City is home to nearly 40,000 residents. The innovative offering of a public Wi-Fi system, which covers ten square blocks in the city's newly renovated Town Plaza, was part of a ten-year development project to transform the old downtown. Businesses, citizens and visitors can now utilize free wireless Internet access, indoors and outdoors, within the coverage area.

"Our campaign initially said 'free and open Wi-Fi access to everybody' ... It was only after we saw an activity report from CopySense Appliance that we realized there were potential problems," said John Richo, director of information technology for the city of Culver City. "The report reflected illegal-download use and some bandwidth was being consumed as a result of accesses to pornographic sites. This activity is clearly not something tax dollars should be paying for."

The filtering program, Audible Magic's CopySense Network Appliance, is not blocking legitimate P2P/Internet activity. From its existing database, CopySense will specifically match and block only those transmissions that are identified as illegal or pornographic.