COICA passes Senate Judiciary with unanimous vote

[Jobydrone]

The "Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" went before senate judiciary committee and passed yesterday.  If made into law it gives the US government unprecidented power in censoring websites they determine to contain infringing materials.  Hopefully this is as far as it gets but we should keep an eye on this.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/pirate-slaying-censorship-bill-gets-unanimous-support.ars

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) sets up a system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the site. This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"We are disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning chose to disregard the concerns of public-interest groups, Internet engineers, Internet companies, human-rights groups and law professors in approving a bill that could do great harm to the public and to the Internet," said Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, who pledged to craft a "more narrowly tailored bill" next year to deal with "rogue websites."

But the content industries don't mind the current version. Bob Pisano, who runs the MPAA, trotted out the "2.4 million hard working, middle-class jobs in all 50 states" that his industry creates. "For these workers and their families, digital theft means declining incomes, lost jobs and reduced health and retirement benefits," he said. "Unfortunately, this means nothing to the operators of rogue websites who seek to benefit illegally from the hard work of others."

The industry is well aware that "censorship" doesn't go down well with many Americans, so it has been playing up the "free speech protections" in the bill lately. RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol made sure to stress the point again this morning.

"With this first vote, Congress has begun to strike at the lifeline of foreign scam sites, while protecting free speech and boosting the legal online marketplace," he said. "Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from de-valuing American property."

That last jibe is the sort of comment made by those who can't understand why, say, people accused of horrific crimes still get defense lawyers. ("Why do you want murderers to go free?") It's sad to see Bainwol resort to it. As we noted earlier this week, we have concerns about this approach that are premised in large part on the content industries' almost comically misguided attempts to lock down or shutter innovative technologies and websites that turn out in fact to be legal and hugely useful—like the VCR, HD radio, MP3 players, HDTV, DAT, and YouTube.

Giving that industry a special process, one that doesn't apply to sites that traffic in other sorts of illegal-in-the-US-activity, raises concerns that have nothing to do with a love of widespread piracy. COICA could censor even sites that "enable or facilitate a violation" of copyright, it mucks about with DNS, and it actually requires the US Attorney General to keep a list of "naughty" sites even though no action has been taken against them. There has to be a more careful approach.

[Rico]

Yeah, good luck with that.  Even powerful tech companies like Google have trouble blocking websites.  I always say, if you want to make money in media make good content that people are happy to pay for.  Don't waste your time or money on what is passed around online.  The music industry tried to fight this for years and have basically stopped because I think they realized it solves nothing.  For every site they manage to both find and shutdown, three more pop up to replace it.  I'm not advocating theft, but I think they are taking the wrong approach - again.  If you offer people an easy and convenient way to buy content, most people will do it (see iTunes, Amazon, etc.).  That's what they should be focusing on.

[Bryancd]

Great point, Rico. iTunes really demonstrated that people will pay a reasonable fee for content and material if it convenient and efficient as opposed to searching out ways to acquire it illegally.

[X]

Yeah, good luck with that.  Even powerful tech companies like Google have trouble blocking websites.  I always say, if you want to make money in media make good content that people are happy to pay for.  Don't waste your time or money on what is passed around online.  The music industry tried to fight this for years and have basically stopped because I think they realized it solves nothing.  For every site they manage to both find and shutdown, three more pop up to replace it.  I'm not advocating theft, but I think they are taking the wrong approach - again.  If you offer people an easy and convenient way to buy content, most people will do it (see iTunes, Amazon, etc.).  That's what they should be focusing on.

Google might have trouble blocking sites, but what they are talking about is the DNS servers deleting the address of specific sites from the internet. Since they control the web routing system, it's not only doable, it's very easy for them to pull it off. They aren't looking to ban sites exactly, it's more like erasing them from existence and not allowing other computers to connect to the site.

It's one of those powers that we have as one of the main hosts of the Web servers, but it's a very scary power.

[Rico]

Yep, I understand that.  But what I was trying to say is it doesn't prevent them from setting up a new site/DNS pointer.  Places are doing this all the time, have redirects and so forth.  Here's an example:  How many times have you seen a video on YouTube popup and then get taken down only to resurface again and again?  Once a digital file of any kind is "on the net" it's VERY hard to snuff it out completely.  My son has a saying, "if you can't find it on the internet, you are not looking hard enough."

[X]

Yep, I understand that.  But what I was trying to say is it doesn't prevent them from setting up a new site/DNS pointer.  Places are doing this all the time, have redirects and so forth.  Here's an example:  How many times have you seen a video on YouTube popup and then get taken down only to resurface again and again?  Once a digital file of any kind is "on the net" it's VERY hard to snuff it out completely.  My son has a saying, "if you can't find it on the internet, you are not looking hard enough."

I get what you're saying now.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Ok, how about a tl;dr. 

Bad idea.  Government's idiocy strikes again, Distributors don't get it, etc and so forth.

King

[Jobydrone]

I'm more concerned with the government as arbiter of content for any website that some giant corporation believes is infringing on their copyright.  Who's to say how far this could go if we allow politicians to wield this kind of power?  Say one day Paramount doesn't like some thread someone posts here, and decides to report TrekSF to whatever government agency pops up to investigate such claims?  Maybe this seems far fetched but it's really not too far beyond the realm of possibility.

[X]

I'm more concerned with the government as arbiter of content for any website that some giant corporation believes is infringing on their copyright.  Who's to say how far this could go if we allow politicians to wield this kind of power?  Say one day Paramount doesn't like some thread someone posts here, and decides to report TrekSF to whatever government agency pops up to investigate such claims?  Maybe this seems far fetched but it's really not too far beyond the realm of possibility.

I agree.

[Blackride]

Most of this is spawning from allofmp3.com. If you don't know who or what it was, it was a Russian site with INSANE prices. It was like 10 cents for a CD. The US was not able to put pressure on Russia because the Russian govt. was basically ignoring them saying that the site was a private industry and they would not get involved.

Also, pointers only stop people temporarily. I can strip the header of the packet and get what I need.....