Slightly sensational title, but this is up for consideration:

http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/coica

What exactly does it do?

The bill creates a blacklists of Internet domain names which the Attorney General can add to with a court order. Internet service providers, financial transaction providers, and online ad vendors (everyone from Comcast to PayPal to Google AdSense) would be required to block any domains on the list.

(The bill used to also have a second list that the AG could add to without a court order, but public pressure has gotten it removed.)

What kind of domains can go on the list?

The list is for domains "dedicated to infringing activity," which is defined very broadly — any site where counterfeit goods or copyrighted material are "central to the activity of the Internet site" would be blocked.

What's so bad about that?

Well, it means sites like YouTube could get censored in the US. Copyright holders like Viacom argue that copyrighted material is central to activity of YouTube. But under current US law, YouTube is perfectly legal as long as they take down copyrighted material when they're informed about it -- which is why Viacom lost their case in court. If this bill passes, Viacom doesn't even need to prove YouTube is doing anything illegal -- as long as they can persuade a court that enough other people are using it for copyright infringement, that's enough to get the whole site censored.

Insanity. This would kill the internet as we know it, because so many sites have copyrighted material that they know is non-actionable or nobody cares about (the stuff people do care about gets taken down), and we can just bypass the entire judicial system of determining wrongdoing and kill the site

It'd be like China. You'd have to find foreign servers to proxy your way in

Man I picked the right time to move to Canada.

Given that it would kill so much advertising revenue, and would pose a significant threat to YouTube, you have to figure Google would be ready to start Civil War II over this, or at least be heavily lobbying against it. If YouTube does get taken down, they will sue over it

USA's internet is doomed!

YouTube has become almost unwatchable in Germany.

At the very least 50% of all video are either "not available in your country" or were taken down by Sony Music Entertainment.

Lobbyst dolar at work ;)

United States of America, the land of freedom.

"It's S. 3804, the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)."

Everyone who has such a boner for bipartisanship should read and reread that sentence until their eyes bleed.

Canada, eh? *Friend invite sent*

This is not good. I can see why they'd think this would help but too many people would try to use it to their advantage.

Don't act like everything is so black and white.