http://torrentfreak.com/senate-passes-bill-to-quash-pirate-websites-101118/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29

Senate Committee Passes Bill To Quash Pirate Websites

Written by Ernesto on November 18, 2010 

As was demonstrated earlier this year, taking the domains of suspected sites has proven to be a highly effective tool to shut down sites that are considered illegal. In September, a group of U.S. senators proposed legislation to make this a standard procedure, and today the Senate’s Judicial Committee unanimously supported the bill.

Before it becomes law the bill will have to be approved by the Senate and Congress, which has to happen quickly because a new Congress will be seated in January.

If signed into law, the ‘Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act’ (COICA) would allow the Department of Justice to file a civil lawsuit against the domain owners. If the courts then decide that a site is indeed promoting copyright infringement, the DOJ can order the domain registrar to take the domain offline. The bill is not limited to domestics offenders, but also allows the DOJ to target foreign domain owners.

The targets of the bill could possibly include many BitTorrent sites. Last week both the MPAA and RIAA submitted their wishlists of “rogue websites” that should be taken care of, and these included The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Demonoid and other popular torrent sites.

Although none of the operators of these sites will be happy with the new legislation, Demonoid has been opposing COICA in public, asking its members to take action.

“If passed, this law will allow the government, under the command of the media companies, to censor the internet as they see fit, like China and Iran do, with the difference that the sites they decide to censor will be completely removed from the internet and not just in the US,” a message on the Demonoid homepage reads.

Aside from classic ‘pirate’ websites, the bill also conveniently provides an effective backdoor to take the whistleblower site Wikileaks offline, or its domain at least. After all, Wikileaks has posted thousands of files that are owned by the United States.

If the bill is accepted it will change the Internet and how domain names are controlled for good. Thus far, no central government has the power to take over domains. This power belongs exclusively to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Over the last weeks, several digital rights groups including the EFF have voiced their concerns over the new legislation, calling it an “unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and a threat to innovation” and claiming it “would break the Internet.”

The protests and opposition are expected to continue during the next weeks, but meanwhile the RIAA and MPAA are applauding the Government’s actions.

Update: Demand Progress just sent out an email that gives hope to those who want COICA to be stopped or changed.

Senator Ron Wyden denounced the bill as “a bunker-buster cluster bomb” aimed at the Internet and pledged to “do everything I can to take the necessary steps to stop it from passing the U.S. Senate.” In addition Hollywood’s Dianne Feinstein told the committee that even she was uncomfortable with the Internet censorship portion of the bill and hoped it could be removed when they take it up again next year.

Even though with the update to this article makes the full passing of this seem like it wont happen. It still might in the next decade. If enacted, even VGC could be a target if we post leaked news about a product and someone calls us on it. It is a massive censorship bill that could destroy any domain forcing us to remember site IP addresses, create dead drops (a lot already exist), or create an anonymous protocol for the internet that would create a second internet pretty much.  From what I can tell the US is starting to change from the land of the free to the land of the oppressed with a lot of civil liberties taken away (look up chalk arrests and chess arrests).

Yeah, while I am no lover of pirating; this clearly oversteps its boundaries.

While I think the pirating sites are cool, wikileaks needs to die. The fact that it's home country allows it to live on shows that they house only spite for us yanks.

I love the freedom of the internet. But when you are allowed to impede combat operations for your own self-righteousness, your smug little ass shouldn't get away scotch free.

It's overly broad compared to what the 6th amendment in particular calls for, as it would violate these sites' right to due process. Even with a court order, they'd need very significant evidence to prove that these sites' businesses would need to have their right to conduct business voided. The current system seems to work out better

Or at least that's what i very much hope for. I tend not to pirate stuff that's actually available for sale in this country (mostly pick up obscure anime or hentai over direct download sites)

I already posted this story, actually

i support wikileaks. They have revealed many war crimes that needed to be pointed out to the UN. I love this country, but even the USA needs to be brought to justice sometimes. Wikileaks also might actually force legal warfare and deter illegal acts during war, which is a good thing.

legal warfare? That's exactly what's wrong with this country.

Yeah, it's a shame that friendly fire happens. But it's impossible to avoid. But if that's what wikileaks was trying to do, they wouldn't have also stolen regular combat sitrep's. And that could reveal pattern's in movement that al-queda or the taliban would love to know. Just think how easy it could be to wage a wage if you knew where the enemy was going to be. And then afterwards your enemy hand feeds you the results of the battle. Yeah, no big deal at all.

Nah, the guy is just an asshat.

no, friendly fire isn't what was brought up in the leaked documents. All the illegal things were all prisoner related battery. Prisoners were treated horridly, some raped, beaten, malnourished, etc. And also incidents like killing civilians that could easily been prevented or were just cared out because soldiers were ordered to kill innocent people. That is what was brought up in the UN with the leaked documents, and what all allied forces are now contending with in the UN. The USA can't backtalk themselves out of doing these types of things and will be fined by the UN for breaking the law.

These things needed to be brought to light, and I read some of the documents. Most of them were just US or UK soldier was here, checking out prison, prisoner beaten, and then the document was classified and sealed without any farther investigation into matters that centered around if the prisoner was treated justly or not. No strategies were revealed, just how big of douche-bags the bureaucrats at the pentagon are towards our POWs during combat.

Well I sure the United States is sorry that it cannot wage a perfect war with an invisible enemy.

Tragedies are gonna happen. It's fuggin' war.

And what you saids isn't accurate either. You apparently only read the abuse documents. There are other documents that give away  names of cities, regions, even tribes. And the sitrep's of what have happenend there. So yeah, sensitive information was revealed to anybody with working eyeballs, internet, and a laptop. But let's thank the swedish guy he gave the taliban leads for the sake of wanting to crucify the United States's rare lapses in war ethics.

you can't stop the internet!

I don't know what to think of this,Yeah it would be good to take down those stupid pirate sites,but I think it just gives the govment way to much power. So,I'm torn on this. lol