[pp.int.general] Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support

[Peter Colton]

Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support
By Nate Anderson 

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) sets up a 
system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from 
the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US 
payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the 
site. This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

"We are disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning chose 
to disregard the concerns of public-interest groups, Internet engineers, 
Internet companies, human-rights groups and law professors in approving a 
bill that could do great harm to the public and to the Internet," said 
Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, who pledged to craft a "more narrowly 
tailored bill" next year to deal with "rogue websites." 

But the content industries don't mind the current version. Bob Pisano, who 
runs the MPAA, trotted out the "2.4 million hard working, middle-class jobs 
in all 50 states" that his industry creates. "For these workers and their 
families, digital theft means declining incomes, lost jobs and reduced 
health and retirement benefits," he said. "Unfortunately, this means nothing 
to the operators of rogue websites who seek to benefit illegally from the 
hard work of others." 

The industry is well aware that "censorship" doesn't go down well with many 
Americans, so it has been playing up the "free speech protections" in the 
bill lately. RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol made sure to stress the point again this 
morning. 

"With this first vote, Congress has begun to strike at the lifeline of 
foreign scam sites, while protecting free speech and boosting the legal 
online marketplace," he said. "Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill 
are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from 
de-valuing American property." 

That last jibe is the sort of comment made by those who can't understand 
why, say, people accused of horrific crimes still get defense lawyers. ("Why 
do you want murderers to go free?") It's sad to see Bainwol resort to it. As 
we noted earlier this week, we have concerns about this approach that are 
premised in large part on the content industries' almost comically misguided 
attempts to lock down or shutter innovative technologies and websites that 
turn out in fact to be legal and hugely useful—like the VCR, HD radio, MP3 
players, HDTV, DAT, and YouTube. 

Giving that industry a special process, one that doesn't apply to sites that 
traffic in other sorts of illegal-in-the-US-activity, raises concerns that 
have nothing to do with a love of widespread piracy. COICA could censor even 
sites that "enable or facilitate a violation" of copyright, it mucks about 
with DNS, and it actually requires the US Attorney General to keep a list of 
"naughty" sites even though no action has been taken against them. There has 
to be a more careful approach. 

Web link for this article:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/pirate-slaying-censorship-bi 
ll-gets-unanimous-support.ars 

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