Piracy domain seizure bill gains support(allows govt to pull plug on sites accused of aiding piracy

[The Straight Story]

A proposed law allowing the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy received a sizable political boost yesterday.

Dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) endorsed the bill in a letter to the U.S. Senate. So did Major League Baseball and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, said new laws are needed to curb access to increasingly sophisticated "rogue Web sites" that "undermine the growth and stability of many industries and the American jobs that they support." The legislation should be enacted "during the time remaining" this year, meaning after the Democratic-controlled Congress returns in November, the letter says.

The proposal is not uncontroversial: Since its introduction a few weeks ago, the idea has alarmed engineers and civil liberties groups, who say that it could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger even some legitimate Web pages that are part of larger sites. According to its current wording, any domain name "dedicated to infringing activities" could find itself in the U.S. Department of Justice's prosecutorial crosshairs.


Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20020408-38.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz13JiWJaNi

[bluestateguy]

1. Put me down as a No

This I suppose is a consequence of the Democrats being so buddy buddy with Hollywood.

[spanone]

2. piracy = stealing. good.

[RC]

3. Depends on what you are stealing and from whom.

[votingupstart]

6. i am not sure what you mean?

you imply that you know you are stealing ( a criminal act ) so is this a robin hood thing, or all music should be free thing or steal from a big multi-national corporation thing or what?

[yodermon]

7. you misspelled "copyright violation"

[boppers]

8. Public library = stealing

How DARE more than one person read a book! They should all pay separately, and books shouldn't be shared with other people!

:sarcasm:

[jberryhill]

11. Clearly DU should be shut down

...as DU is currently a copyright infringement defendant.

[FreeState]

4. K&R - I've just about lost my current 11 year job to piracy

its stealing and it should be treated as such. The company I work for has gone from 18 people to 3. To be honest the company will be lucky if its around past the new year.

[eShirl]

5. the world economy had nothing to do with it?

[FreeState]

9. Yes and no

without saying were I work lets just say piracy is killing the market - and it was before the economy, around 2005 things started to go down hill, the economy has just made it worse, but its pretty bad regardless of the economy.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. No, your boss is blaming piracy^H^H^H^H^H^H copyright violation. -nt

[Heywood J]

12. I note this part right here, for all defenders to see.

Web sites accused of aiding piracy

The bill, known as COICA for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, doesn't authorize the Feds to shut down allegedly infringing sites directly. Rather, the Justice Department would seize the Web site's domain name and require any credit card or bank with U.S. operations to cease doing business with the accused pirate.

Nothing like denying due process to someone when they do something you don't like. A domain is worth money - money paid to register it at the very least. This is property seizure without a trial. Let's see people defend that.

That wording is significant. Because the phrase "providing access" appears, that would sweep in speciality search engines including The Pirate Bay that provide links to copyrighted works, even if the actual BitTorrent streams are hosted elsewhere.

Except that those search don't provide links to copyrighted works: they provide links to trackers which enable clients to discover other clients. The trackers are the ones facilitating access to copyrighted works.

To put this in perspective, DU links to blogs, which often copy text wholesale from newspaper websites. Do the MPAA/RIAA-defenders think DU should be seized because of this? That's what trackers do, and that's what this law would allow. Poorly written law is worse than none at all.

They're pressing for a vote before the new Congress convenes in early 2011, perhaps because of concern that the election could tilt one or both chambers toward Republican control and make enactment of COICA less likely. One possible vehicle is an appropriations bill to fund the federal government for the next 10 months; that debate will resume under Democratic leadership by the time a temporary funding measure expires on December 3.

Nothing like trying to piggyback something they know they can't pass onto something necessary. It's despicable when Republicans do it and it's worse when companies try to slip their business interests into law.



My heart goes out to any small businessman who gets screwed while making a legit product (e.g. the Chinese knock them off and sell fakes). This is the kind of entity we should spend our limited resources to defend. Parasitical conglomerates like the MPAA and RIAA are anything but - they treat legitimate customers like pirates (many non-skippable FBI warnings and nagging anti-piracy commercials on your legit disc) and make it nearly impossible to use a legitimately purchased product (e.g. the HDCP fiasco, playing disks in Linux).