A recent bill introduced in the Senate, Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act has a bipartisan group of co-sponsors, but has many in the Internet community worried. The main goal of this bill is to reduce copyright and privacy violations, but the way the Government is trying to implement this rule would give them power to shutting down entire domains in two ways:
- 1) by court order
- 2) by the creation of a public blacklist, created by the Justice department, without court review and by strongly suggesting to ISPs to block this second list (which is the main cause of concern by Internet advocates and freedom of speech supporters)
Read more and tell us what you think.
4 Comments
The COICA bill is analogous to a “trojanned” software product. On one hand is the legitimate intent and purpose of protecting the integrity of the internet platform for business, and on the other is the dubious creation of an auxiliary role that parallels the courts’ function. Call it self-kidnapping, a backdoor, etc. The bill is self defeatist and attempts to put the cart before the horse by allowing defendants to seek remedy in the courts, but does not apply the same principle by delegating authority to the Attorney General (AG) to unilaterally blacklist sites considered to be engaged in “infringement” activities. This auxiliary yet treacherous role MUST be “killed”. This is a warning sign that the bill’s writers cannot count on the judicial system to play its role as effectively as initially acknowledged in the bill. Due process ensures an equitable distribution of justice.
There are two major issues being addressed here. One concerning IP (Intellectual Property) and the other censorship. I have used EFF.org quite a bit in the past as they are a legitimate source of information. They can be guilty of drum-beating at times with their writing methods. It is important to assess the relationship and responsibility both IP and censorship have with one another. Seems like censorship was an innocent bystander on the Internet that became a casualty of IP.
Do I agree with censorship of any kind? Does the government have the right to tell me where to go, what to see and what to download on the Internet? Here again, do companies not have the right to profit from their creation? To me, life is consequence. Everything reciprocates. This is just the natural order of things. There is something subtle about ‘choice’ being made for us. Herein lies the lesson.
I agree that any censorship is wrong. The government’s argument that they are targeting only those sites that legitimately use piracy techniques is misleading if you read the bill itself. Reading the actual bill tells you that any site that has more than x number of links would be considered for a piracy site and possible shut down. That would mean that Capella, with all the links to financial, library, bookstore, etc, could be determined to be a piracy site due only to the number of links that the site contains.
As for the Justice Department being in charge of this with absolutely NO OVERSIGHT?? WTH were these people thinking? I mean, look at how the justice department handled the waterboarding issue! If left to the idiots in congress, America will be taken back to the days of Community Bulletin Boards, and FTP transfers to get the information that we need!
It usually gets worse before it gets any better. Kind of like the flu until the fever breaks. I found an interesting ‘related’ article. If governments succeed in claiming information exchange as ‘aggression’ my feeling is that further compartmentalization of the Internet is at hand. Free speech online can be viewed as ‘aggression’? Nothing good would come of this.
*Link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130052701