COICA back under a new name - PROTECT IP

[xPreatorianx]

Well everyone here should know about the old bill COICA so I won't cover it. But if you don't know about it here's a link to read up on it : Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now it seems it has been renamed PROTECT IP and is now more expansive. Here's the info

This is really bad! Yes right now it only applies to piracy and stuff like that. But the US government can easily expand it once it is completely passed to shut down any site that they want to. Plus with the current bill they completely bypass the justice system. They don't need a warrant, no court hearing, no nothing. All they have to do is simply take the site down. But with this new bill it will also apply to google. So if you are searching for a blacklisted site, it won't even pop up in google!

Please everyone, voice your opinion and help donate to organizations like the EFF to help stop this! The internet should be a free and completely open service for the entire world.

Plus most of the world's servers go through the US global DNS servers so if there are black lists put on that server, it means everyone in the world going through those servers will have the same censorship. Which will mean people will start moving to different providers which can impact the economy over here. (Our internet business is the leading in the world IIRC.)

Surprise! After months in the oven, the soon-to-be-released new version of a major US Internet censorship bill didn't shrink in scope—it got much broader. Under the new proposal, search engines, Internet providers, credit card companies, and ad networks would all have cut off access to foreign "rogue sites"—and such court orders would not be limited to the government. Private rightsholders could go to court and target foreign domains, too.

As for sites which simply change their domain name slightly after being targeted, the new bill will let the government and private parties bring quick action against each new variation.

Get ready for the "PROTECT IP Act."
Targeting Google

A source in Washington provided Ars with a detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, which takes its acronym from "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property." This beats the old acronym, COICA; who can be against protection? The actual legislation should be introduced shortly.

The bill is an attempt to deal with foreign sites which can be difficult for US enforcement to reach, even when those sites explicitly target US citizens.

The PROTECT IP Act makes a few major changes to last year's COICA legislation. First, it does provide a more limited definition of sites “dedicated to infringing activities.” The previous definition was criticized as being unworkably vague, and it could have put many legitimate sites at risk.

But what the PROTECT IP Act gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. While the definition of targeted sites is tighter, the remedies against such sites get broader. COICA would have forced credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa to stop doing business with targeted sites, and it would have prevented ad networks from working with such sites. It also suggested a system of DNS blocking to make site nominally more difficult to access.

The PROTECT IP Act adds one more entity to this list: search engines. Last week, when the Department of Homeland Security leaned on Mozilla to remove a Firefox add-on making it simple to bypass domain name seizures, we wondered at the request. After all, the add-on only made it easier to do a simple Google search, and we wondered "what the next logical step in this progression will be: requiring search engines to stop returning results for seized domain names?"

Turns out that's exactly what's being contemplated. According to the detailed summary of the PROTECT IP Act, this addition "responds to concerns raised that search engines are part of the ecosystem that directs Internet user traffic and therefore should be part of the solution."

Rightsholders also score a major victory with the new legislation, which grants them a private right of action—something Google publicly trashed as a terrible idea earlier this year. Copyright and trademark holders don't have to badger the government into targeting sites under the new bill; they are allowed to seek court orders directly, though these orders would only apply to payment processors and advertising networks (not to ISPs or search engines).
Help us out, please

The emphasis here is on forcing intermediaries to get involved in policing such sites. Rightsholders have had difficulty suing the millions of end users engaged in infringement, and they have had difficulty suing the sites themselves when they are based abroad. But MasterCard and Google? Those are easy, US-based targets who will comply will any law Congress passes.

The PROTECT IP Act goes even further than forcing these intermediaries to take action after a court order; it actively encourages them to take unilateral action without any sort of court order at all. The bill summary makes clear that ad networks and payment processors will be protected if they “voluntarily cease doing business with infringing websites, outside of any court ordered action.” If a search engine decides that the next YouTube is a copyright infringer—and rightsholders have often sued sites like Veoh and YouTube in the past—it can simply cut off advertising for that reason and be immunized under the law. So can Visa.

The bill also encourages everyone—domain name registries, search engines, payment processors, and ad networks—to cut off access to infringing sites that "endanger the public health." That is, online pharmacies (which are often hotbeds of counterfeiting).

Given the strong opinions elicited by the earlier COICA, the expansion of powers here is a bit surprising, but the continued presence of the legislation is not. That's because, no matter how much power and money Congress devotes to intellectual property, rightsholders are back every couple of years for more—as the NET Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PRO-IP Act, and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remind us. Each is "essential"—but somehow never quite enough.

Source : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-sites-too.ars

PS. If I am missing any information or I am wrong on some things. Please clarify and I'll correct it! I thought the bill was completely squashed so I stopped following it until I saw the link tweeted on twitter by @kakaroto.

UPDATE : Here's the link to sign the petition that I stupidly forgot to link in the first place. http://www.demandprogress.org For that I sincerely apologize! EVERYONE PLEASE SIGN THIS! It only takes 2 minutes out of your day and could very well go along way to help completely remove this damn thing from existence. Also please consider donating to the EFF while your signing petitions to help the internet at large.

[Slynk]

Yeah heard about this through MoveOn. If you want to do anything about it, you can sign this petition:

Worse Than China? U.S. Government Wants To Censor Search Engines And Browsers | Demand Progress

[SHER]

its simple. these assholes are crippling the US economy. for there is a saying that goes like this : if there are a thousand ways to get caught, there are a thousand and one ways to escape

sites will shift their servers elsewhere. we might see some new search engine that is not headquartered at the US

these legit things are only alive because of piracy, as piracy compliments and completes legit things. like its said, there is no light without dark

hope the senate diapers understand this fairly soon.

[AlexDC22]

ok time to move to a different country, this is bs people, shit like this should not be taken lightly, we really need our voices to be heard loud and clear...STOP CENSORSHIP!!!

[Chaos-Kid]

I dont know if this has been posted or not.
but, People of the internet! It is time to stand and fight!
http://demandprogress.org/ Go here and sign the petition against this bill, Do everything you can to stop this!



Edit: (got put in the same thread, please dont flame me for putting this in this thread XD)

[Mardoxx]

*sigh* kids...

also tell ev0 he's a faggot from me

[mister]

I´m with the us government on this one

[msr]

You have no real chance against these people(gov etc).

[Chaos-Kid]

your with the us government on this one? sure go ahead and let them block whatever website they want.

[themuse]

is this guy fukin serious?(mister)
i cant believe the ignorance and apathy i am seeing here and other places too.


with the government? i rarely flame anyone ,but you sir are an @SSHOLE!
A STUPID NAIVE @ASSHOLE ,you probably look like your avatar ,a dumb rube with a mullet
you have no busniess even being here then if you feel that way ,because this will be one of the first sites that gets blocked,dumb ass

the bill has already passed a senate judiciary committee
if not for the voice of opposition of but a single senator(wyden of oregon), it may have gone through to the house

i am not saying you have to go and do ddos attacks but at least stop being so god damn ignorant and at least go to demandprogress.org and sign the petition against the bill

and your probably also naive enough to think that it will only be used to go after counterfeiters and pirates ,and never used to shutdown or silence disenting political opinions or sites that support them or to stiffle freedom of speech

typical american sheep ,not even smart enough to know when something is or isnt in his own best interest,guess you cant really blame people like this though right,since there are only 4 huge multinational corporations that own and control the entirety of the media tv,newspapers,magazines,radio,and a good portion of the internet
so why not just give them more control over the last bit of it too

i can not believe that everyone on this site would not atleast want to sign the internet petition against this bill,coica 2.0 aka protect ip aka pipa

i guess your not happy with the current state of the internet and feel that it needs to be censored ,
sure it does not look good ,has anyone seen list of corporations,special interest groups, agencies ,and organizations that are for this BS legislation?
it is a mile long! but it doesnt mean you should just throw up your hands and give up and do nothing

i suppose mister was also for the dmca too, and was also on sonys side and against geohot and grafchokolo in their legal action