Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act

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[Archangel]

http://www.techeye.net/internet/senate-passes-combating-online-infringement-and-counterfeits-act

US agencies and officials  could get new powers to go after foreign websites that sell counterfeit goods and pirated music, movies and books. This is thanks to a new bill - Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act - which has today been passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It is hoped that the new bill, which was approved unanimously in a 19-0 vote and has the backing of companies such as Disney, the Motion Picture Association of America - of course - and Nike, will target "rogue websites" in countries such as China that are currently outside the reach of American law.

It will allow the Justice Department to seek a court order against the domain name of websites offering illegal music or film downloads as well as those that sell counterfeit goods.


Once the Justice Department has the order, it could shut down the site by requiring the U.S. registrar to suspend the domain name.

If the registry is located outside the United States, the Attorney General could go after the website by requiring US based ISPs, payment processors and advertising networks to stop doing business with it.


Understandably not everyone is pleased. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already called it "Internet censorship" that could harm the credibility of the United States as a steward of the global domain name system.

Back in September it told us that the bill would break the internet one domain at a time by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block internet users from reaching certain websites that are hosted in the US. It was also concerned that the bill would create two internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second is a blacklist of domain names that the Department of Justice determines - without judicial review - are "dedicated to infringing activities."


"COICA is a fairly short bill, but it could have a longstanding and dangerous impact on freedom of speech, current internet architecture, copyright doctrine, foreign policy, and beyond," EFF said.

"In 2010, if there's anything we've learned about efforts to re-write copyright law to target "piracy" online, it's that they are likely to have unintended consequences."


Will we be like china haveing to use proxys?

[Kosh GTO]

Passing this bill is not something any constituti­on loving person would ever want, since it will open the door to even heavier handed laws to be passed. there will always be better ways to catch crooks without infringing on the very rights that make this America.

personally I find it highly interestin­g that Myself and 3 friends that all use the same ISP (Charter) have been unable to connect to demandprog­ress.org lately. they claim it is not black-holed and yet I can still ping it.

Internet Users that reside in countries that use common law as a basis for their legal systems, will surely feel the wrath of the heavy weights as they take legal action against each of us for having an independen­t thought. Once a precedent has been set there will be no stopping the myriad of frivolous court cases that will surely follow.

also we only need look back at recent cases against organizations like Napster, Lime-wire and Kazan, or individual­s; Brianna LaHara, Jammie Thomas-Ras­set, or the 20,000 Bit-torrent Users that were sued in March this year. Each case referenced another case with a frivolous basis for legal action in order to draw the guilty verdict, increase the punishment or compensati­on for perceived violation or loss, and lower the criteria required to begin legal proceeding­s for their next possible case.

One only need to look at something as simple as the 'Out Of Court' Settlement­s that have come through in the past 5 years, moving from $3000 in 2004 to just under $10,000, or the case against Jammie Thomas-Ras­set and her $1.5M 'damages' to Capitol.

Also my last two Cents : I think that after 15 years it's time to finally re-think intellectu­al property rights law. It seems that Tech has made much of the concept obsolete. I love music. I go to see musicians play, live, in front of me. I hate the Record industry machine and the countless iterations of the same old thing that they create all in the name of making another buck over promoting anything truly new or original. If digital file sharing means the death of that industry, we're all better off. We'll be able to get back to paying musicians directly and benefit from all the wonderful variety that's out there, if you only look beyond the "industry product".

[A-HK]

personally I find it highly interestin­g that Myself and 3 friends that all use the same ISP (Charter) have been unable to connect to demandprog­ress.org lately. they claim it is not black-holed and yet I can still ping it.

Use a site checker like
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/demandprogress.org
it says "It's just you. http://demandprogress.org is up."
And I can see the site -- but I'm not in the US.

But you had an invisible hyphen in your text -- was that deliberate?
It translates to demandprog%C2%ADress.org which looks the same, and your browser might understand, but strictly shouldn't work.
 

[Archangel]

One only need to look at something as simple as the 'Out Of Court' Settlement­s that have come through in the past 5 years, moving from $3000 in 2004 to just under $10,000, or the case against Jammie Thomas-Ras­set and her $1.5M 'damages' to Capitol.

$2,500 out of court! ;|