Senate Bill Gives Feds Power to Order Blacklisting

[EmptyTimCup]

laws cannot keep up with technology .......

this is disturbing ...


Today Piracy .....Tomorrow What Politics

Senate Bill Gives Feds Power to Order Blacklisting of Piracy Sites


Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”

A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them.

“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the bill’s main sponsor.

The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.

Under the old COICA draft, the government was authorized to obtain court orders to seize so-called generic top-level domains ending in .com, .org and .net. The new legislation (.pdf), with the same sponsors, narrows that somewhat.

Instead of allowing for the seizure of domains, it allows the Justice Department to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs stop rendering the DNS for a particular website — meaning the sites would still be accessible outside the United States.

 

[EmptyTimCup]

COICA v. 2.0: the PROTECT IP Act

Rights Holders as Plaintiffs

Another major addition to the bill is a private right of action, allowing copyright holders to get court orders against payment processors and ad networks, if a site they have links with comes under the scrutiny of the law.

This new provision gives private parties the ability to get injunctions against credit card companies, ad networks, or search engines that serve targeted sites. One of the few upsides of the old bill was the fact that those who trusted the prosecutorial discretion of the government could take solace in the fact that only a foolhardy federal prosecutor would go after the edge cases of Internet entrepreneurs whose business models might be in good faith, though they ruffled the feathers of rightsholders. With the introduction of a private right of action, the injunctions issuing from this bill can now be called forth at the litigious whim of any copyright holder.

We've seen in the past how many rightsholders have abused similar processes, issuing takedown notices regarding public domain works, mothers filming home videos or documentary filmmakers criticizing their work. The same trade organizations pushing for the passage of this bill have yet to admit that users should be able to space-shift works that they have already bought and paid for onto their own devices. How can we expect this newfound power to be wielded by those same interests?