Pirate-slaying censorship bill gets unanimous support

As of about 12 hours ago, ArsTechnica reported that Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.  COICA allows the US Attorney General to target "Internet sites dedicated to infringing activities" both inside and outside the country, obtaining a court-ordered injunction against them if they have "no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than" sharing copyrighted files without authorization.  Such schemes usually run up against the distributed anarchy of the Internet, but COICA will try to hammer sites located in other countries by leaning on key supporting players that are based in the US. Should a judge agree that a website is "dedicated to infringing activities," that site will face a host of tough penalties that go beyond mere site censorship:

The US government can (1) blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, (2) ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and (3) forbid online ad networks from working with the site.

And who do you think would be thrilled with this ruling?

Immediately following the ruling, Public Knowledge Proposes Changes To ‘Misleading and Abusive’ Copyright Practices

For Immediate Release: 

November 18, 2010

Copyright owners are engaging in ‘misleading and abusive’ practices that are unfair to consumers, Public Knowledge said today in the third part of its Copyright Reform Act (CRA) project. The project was established to analyze problems with, and suggest solutions to, copyright law.

In the report, “Copyright Abuse and Notice,” PK said “Misleading copyright warning notices are so pervasive today that the average consumer is likely to take them for granted.” Those range from notices on works which have been part of the public domain for years, including by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, to today’s warnings issued by the National Football League which “completely disregards copyright law.”