We recently covered some of the details of various "six strikes" policies being implemented by most of the large broadband providers in the US, noting that with Verizon's, it appeared that small businesses that offered free and open WiFi could get in trouble for doing so. TorrentFreak has followed up with Jill Lesser, the executive director of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the organization coordinating these plans, and discovered that this impact on small businesses is not an error, and Lesser does not seem to see a problem with it, arguing that offering such open and free WiFi is a violation of the terms of service for most small businesses.

“In addition, the terms of service on such accounts do not allow them to be used to provide free WiFi or ‘hotspots’ so the hypothetical cafe owner offering public WiFi will not be subject to the CAS if they are following their terms of service.”

Similarly, she says that if it impacts small businesses or home-based businesses that use residential accounts, she doesn't see it as a problem, since those businesses shouldn't "allow" their employees to "engage in copyright theft." Of course, it's not theft, but infringement -- and it's frustrating that someone like Lesser would misrepresent these things.

That said, her cavalier attitude towards these very common scenarios, which will have real impacts on a variety of small businesses, is unfortunate and dangerous. The importance of a fully working broadband connection to small businesses todays cannot be overstated. To suggest that all of this is okay because they're not following an almost universally ignored term in the terms of service on such accounts seems to be dismissing things way too simply.

The end result of this is likely to be a lot less public and open WiFi at a time when we actually need much more open access. That may not matter to the RIAA and MPAA -- who still don't understand the importance and value of internet access -- but it matters an awful lot to the pubilc and a variety of small businesses.

TorrentFreak broke an unsurprising, but amazing, story this week in uncovering that Stroz Friedberg, the supposedly "independent and impartial tech expert" that was brought on to assist the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) in making sure that the new "six strikes" program BitTorrent monitoring is accurate, used to lobby for the RIAA. Apparently this bit of news took folks at CCI completely by surprise, since the RIAA failed to mention that tidbit of info. Now, CCI is apparently scrambling to make things right -- either by finding someone new, or by "opening up" the review that Stroz Friedberg does for the public to review. Either way, it's pretty incredible that the RIAA thought that no one would notice that the "impartial and independent" expert just happened to be a biased party that lobbied directly for them in the past.

As you probably know, last year, the big ISPs agreed to a six strikes plan (really five strikes), after the White House pressured the ISPs to cave to Hollywood's interests. What many of us noticed, of course, is that this backroom deal left the public out of the equation, which was obvious from the fact that it actually takes away some of the public's rights -- for example, by curtailing the definition of the public domain.

Earlier this year, the RIAA said that the program would finally kick off in July. There were some rumors of delays, and then a bunch of sites (including us) got confused about the actual start date. There have been multiple reports now saying that it will actually roll out later in the fall.

Of course, this has a lot of people wondering just what the delay is about. There might be a clue in a piece over at The Daily Dot, where they say that the director of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), Jill Lesser, has hinted strongly that the ISPs disagree with some RIAA/MPAA demands:

Jill Lesser, Executive Director of the Center for Copyright Information, told the Daily Dot that the repeated delays were because the coalition wanted an independent review from the American Arbitration Association.

She hinted that disagreement between the ISPs or the lobbying groups might have held up the process. Responding to a question about the delay, she wrote “members are all very involved in internal planning and review of the alert system, which has been and will continue to be a collaborative process.”

Of course, there's one big thing that happened between when the agreement was made and now: the huge public reaction to SOPA. After that, the EFF rightly called for scrapping the backroom deal and starting a new negotiation that actually involved the public. That recommendation was ignored by Hollywood, of course, but the news of some internal fighting hopefully means that the ISPs are asserting themselves a bit more strongly against excessive RIAA/MPAA demands. Of course, once again, this is why it would be nicer if this debate were in public, rather than hidden behind closed doors.

One of our key concerns with the so-called "voluntary" six strikes agreement set up between the ISPs and the content companies (with a major shove from the White House) was the fact that there was no one representing the users at the table. As much as the White House has insisted that the entertainment industry alone represents "all the stakeholders," the simple fact is that copyright law is supposed to benefit the public, not the legacy industry gatekeepers.

And while it may have been the way things were done around copyright in the past, the public's reaction to SOPA should have changed that equation. No longer should decisions around copyright law that effect the public internet users be made without their input. And, yet, that's exactly what happened with the six strikes agreement. Even if the new Center for Copyright Infringement (CCI), which has been set up to run the new six strikes program, has appointed some consumer rights advocates to its powerless "advisory" board, shouldn't we go back to the drawing board and have a true, open discussion about these things that includes the users of the internet? After all, aren't they the true stakeholders here?

The folks over at the EFF are calling for a complete "reset" on the agreement, and saying that it's time to do it correctly: with internet users at the table, rather than kept out of the room. The statement notes that the advisory board is not the same as including internet users in the process:

An advisory board is just that: a group of advisors, not decisionmakers. No matter how you slice it, subscribers don't have a seat at the table now any more than they did in the earlier negotiations.

Instead, they point out that the only way this is going to be done in a way that's fair and that actually serves the true purpose of copyright law is to start again, and have the discussion done in public where the public has a true say in what happens:

So here's an idea: press reset. This collaboration has been years in the making, with the ISPs under heavy pressure from the content industries and government officials. It may be that they made the best deal they could under the circumstances, but since then the world has changed. If the ISPs decided to take this back to drawing board, we think their customers will stand with them, loudly and publicly -- but only if they also insist that their customers have voice in the process.

Indeed. This may have seemed like a crazy idea pre-SOPA blackout, but since then, the public is aware and energized on this issue -- and they want to participate in the conversation. The number one point we've heard over and over again since the January 18th blackouts is about how the public can get involved in a positive agenda around copyright. Here's a key opportunity. The big ISPs who signed on to this six strikes deal should call for a brand new discussion, one that is not done in a backroom, but is done in public, where the public can take part.

As we get closer to the RIAA/MPAA and the major ISPs rolling out their "voluntary" six strikes agreement, turning those ISPs into Hollywood's private police force, details are finally coming out about the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), the organization that the RIAA/MPAA were setting up to manage the six strikes effort. In a move that's at least slightly surprising, and shows that they realized they couldn't completely one-side this entire thing, CCI will be run by Jill Lesser. Lesser was a managing director at The Glover Park Group (a lobbying firm), but also on the board of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a group that is often on the correct side of these issues. That said, Glover Park was also one of the key lobbying firms that the MPAA used to promote SOPA.

However, lots of folks are pointing to the fact that CCI has also set up an advisory board with some familiar names of folks who have fought for consumer rights repeatedly. As Greg Sandoval reports at News.com:

CCI's advisory board will include a large number of privacy and technology advocates, including Jerry Berman, chairman of the Internet Education Foundation and founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology; Marsali Hancock, president of iKeepSafe.org; Jules Polenetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum; and Gigi Sohn, president and CEO of Public Knowledge.

This is, at the very least, a nod to the fact that the entertainment industry can't just completely control how this system works. Of course, it's an open question how much power this advisory board will actually have, and how much of this is really window dressing. In fact, the actual power to run CCI is in the hands of a separate "board of directors" which is entirely made up of entertainment industry and ISP representatives.

The "good news" is that many of the folks on the advisory board are certainly not at all shy about making their voices heard if they feel they're being ignored, and Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn is not one to go away quietly on these issues. As she told Sandoval:

"It was not an easy decision for me to join this Advisory Board," Sohn said in a statement. "I did so because I saw the need to be an advocate for the rights of Internet users and to provide transparency."

Sohn said that one of the first things she wants to see once CCI is up and running is to abolish any kind of service suspension.

"I will ask at the appropriate time," Sohn said, "for the ISPs to promise not to interpret the agreement's 'temporary restriction' provision as allowing for suspension of user Internet accounts."

This whole thing will be worth watching closely, and I'm glad that at least a few good people are on the advisory board, but we'll see what happens when the actual "strikes" start issuing.