Article
Copyright Holders May Kill Public Wi-Fi
A bill that's close to becoming law in the United Kingdom may spell the end of widespread publicly available Wi-Fi hotspots in pubs, cafes, and even libraries, except those that are run by the largest and best-funded organizations.
The Digital Economy Bill is a mess of many different topics that's receiving scant scrutiny by members of Parliament—it's been expedited for no good reason—while burying a host of crap that destroys civil rights and protections.
Among these is a "three strikes" copyright infringement provision that, in addition to the ill effects I described last week, includes a specific set of provisions that would make Wi-Fi hotspot providers legally liable when users of those hotspots download content illegally. The provisions would put Wi-Fi hotspot operators in a serious bind—and could be a model for killing Wi-Fi elsewhere, if "three strikes" is extended to the US and beyond.
I spoke to Danny O'Brien, a British privacy advocate and former tech journalist who lives in the United States. Until recently, O'Brien was the international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation . (He just moved to a new job at the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
O'Brien said that the problem with the Digital Economy Bill, first documented in depth by ZDnet UK in February, is that "the people who own those Internet connections have not, until now, been deemed responsible for what other people are using that connection for."
Wi-Fi hotspots haven't been thought of as Internet service providers (ISPs), but as customers of ISPs. But if the bill passes, it will make Wi-Fi hotspot owners "responsible for everything that is being used on your Internet system," O'Brien said.
In the typical three-strikes regime, an ISP, on behalf of copyright holders, is required to track each time users download copyrighted material illegally. Hit three times, and you're penalized with suspension or disconnection. (The Digital Economy Bill seems to call for "temporary suspension." Scroll down in this Guardian article to the "Reducing online piracy and copyright theft" section for details.)
The question is whether a Wi-Fi hotspot, with many users accessing it, is treated like an individual account at an ISP or like a service provider itself.
In theory, a Wi-Fi hotspot could get a strike whenever any visitor engaged in any alleged bad behavior. That could add up quickly. "There's not one customer per Internet connection," O'Brien said.
If a Wi-Fi hotspot was to treated as an ISP, the hotspot owner would have to track usage—almost certainly requiring logins, and possibly having to obtain public IP addresses (not the shared, so-called private kind used by inexpensive routers).
Larger chains of hotspots, such as The Cloud, T-Mobile UK, BT OpenZone, and others already have accounts and act somewhat like ISPs. But tens of thousands of much-less-formal locations could be in a bind.
Libraries and academic institutions may suffer from the same fate, although they are lobbying heavy for exclusions. Many academic networks already operate under much less onerous rules of conduct about downloading copyrighted material without permission.
O'Brien noted that this requirement to identify a network as a subscriber or an ISP will have an effect on the Internet's development. Technologies in which there's no clear specific user, such as mesh networking (in which clusters of nodes relay data), would be thwarted.
"It really highlights the struggle to create some regulatory system right at the edge of the network," O'Brien said. The media firms involved in pushing these laws seem to be saying, "If we need to break the Internet to do that, that's your problem and not ours," O'Brien said.
In reality, O'Brien isn't sure how this will all play out.
"It's going to be very hard for the [copyright-holders]. If they really want to pursue three strikes, and not just have it this unloaded gun on the table, then they're going to hit these Wi-Fi networks more often than anyone else," he said.
Killing Wi-Fi hotspots could become the same sort of flashpoint as suing dead people, children, and grannies without computers did during the RIAA lawsuit extravaganza in the United States.
If the media firms try to enforce these rights, O'Brien said, people who share files illegally will simply pursue other means. "The practice will be, all of these people will get these [notices], and say, they've spotted me doing this," and go to a page that tells you how to stop being caught, he said. This simple pushes illegal use underground, he said.
The Digital Economy Bill may become law any day now, and Wi-Fi may disappear as a public amenity except when provided by large firms. If so, that will be a sobering preview of the chilling effect that we could see in the United States and beyond if a global anti-counterfeiting trade agreement moves forward.
The Digital Economy Bill is a mess of many different topics that's receiving scant scrutiny by members of Parliament—it's been expedited for no good reason—while burying a host of crap that destroys civil rights and protections.
Among these is a "three strikes" copyright infringement provision that, in addition to the ill effects I described last week, includes a specific set of provisions that would make Wi-Fi hotspot providers legally liable when users of those hotspots download content illegally. The provisions would put Wi-Fi hotspot operators in a serious bind—and could be a model for killing Wi-Fi elsewhere, if "three strikes" is extended to the US and beyond.
I spoke to Danny O'Brien, a British privacy advocate and former tech journalist who lives in the United States. Until recently, O'Brien was the international outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation . (He just moved to a new job at the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
O'Brien said that the problem with the Digital Economy Bill, first documented in depth by ZDnet UK in February, is that "the people who own those Internet connections have not, until now, been deemed responsible for what other people are using that connection for."
Wi-Fi hotspots haven't been thought of as Internet service providers (ISPs), but as customers of ISPs. But if the bill passes, it will make Wi-Fi hotspot owners "responsible for everything that is being used on your Internet system," O'Brien said.
In the typical three-strikes regime, an ISP, on behalf of copyright holders, is required to track each time users download copyrighted material illegally. Hit three times, and you're penalized with suspension or disconnection. (The Digital Economy Bill seems to call for "temporary suspension." Scroll down in this Guardian article to the "Reducing online piracy and copyright theft" section for details.)
The question is whether a Wi-Fi hotspot, with many users accessing it, is treated like an individual account at an ISP or like a service provider itself.
In theory, a Wi-Fi hotspot could get a strike whenever any visitor engaged in any alleged bad behavior. That could add up quickly. "There's not one customer per Internet connection," O'Brien said.
If a Wi-Fi hotspot was to treated as an ISP, the hotspot owner would have to track usage—almost certainly requiring logins, and possibly having to obtain public IP addresses (not the shared, so-called private kind used by inexpensive routers).
Larger chains of hotspots, such as The Cloud, T-Mobile UK, BT OpenZone, and others already have accounts and act somewhat like ISPs. But tens of thousands of much-less-formal locations could be in a bind.
Libraries and academic institutions may suffer from the same fate, although they are lobbying heavy for exclusions. Many academic networks already operate under much less onerous rules of conduct about downloading copyrighted material without permission.
O'Brien noted that this requirement to identify a network as a subscriber or an ISP will have an effect on the Internet's development. Technologies in which there's no clear specific user, such as mesh networking (in which clusters of nodes relay data), would be thwarted.
"It really highlights the struggle to create some regulatory system right at the edge of the network," O'Brien said. The media firms involved in pushing these laws seem to be saying, "If we need to break the Internet to do that, that's your problem and not ours," O'Brien said.
In reality, O'Brien isn't sure how this will all play out.
"It's going to be very hard for the [copyright-holders]. If they really want to pursue three strikes, and not just have it this unloaded gun on the table, then they're going to hit these Wi-Fi networks more often than anyone else," he said.
Killing Wi-Fi hotspots could become the same sort of flashpoint as suing dead people, children, and grannies without computers did during the RIAA lawsuit extravaganza in the United States.
If the media firms try to enforce these rights, O'Brien said, people who share files illegally will simply pursue other means. "The practice will be, all of these people will get these [notices], and say, they've spotted me doing this," and go to a page that tells you how to stop being caught, he said. This simple pushes illegal use underground, he said.
The Digital Economy Bill may become law any day now, and Wi-Fi may disappear as a public amenity except when provided by large firms. If so, that will be a sobering preview of the chilling effect that we could see in the United States and beyond if a global anti-counterfeiting trade agreement moves forward.
