EFF calls bill “misguided gift to a shortsighted industry”.
Electronic Frontier Foundation is weighing in on the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, and it doesn’t like what it sees.
In an analysis EFF posted online, the group says the bill would “break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites.”
EFF makes several points, some of which echo my take on the bill.
1. This is a censorship bill that runs roughshod over freedom of speech on the Internet.
2. It is designed to undermine basic Internet infrastructure.
3. COICA sends the world the message that the United States approves of unilateral Internet censorship
4. The bill’s imbalances threaten to complicate existing laws and policies.
There’s some good insight in EFF’s analysis. I’m particularly worried about #2 and #3.
Among the issues EFF draws attention to is an internet blacklist of domains not taking down but deemed in violation. EFF says domains will get on the list by a “McCarthy-like procedure of public snitching”.
stewart says
so…if some one were doing something clearly illegal then the domian should not be shut down? Is that it? Do I have that correctly?
domainer ubber allis then?
Deke says
That’s right stewart….until the owner is proven guilty.
Right now it reads guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty.
Jon says
B.S., Deke. You cannot hold a trial in America for a web hoster in Iran. What are you going to do? Extradite them? Not going to happen.
If you can’t shut down their illegal overseas activity, and if you can’t bring them to trial in America, the only option left is to block them and/or shut down their domain.
If they want to dispute the actions against them, they can still do so. Just like you can go to court to dispute your parking/speeding tickets, which you are given without a trial first.
Bill Sweetman says
@ Jon, shutting down a domain name because of alleged and unproven “illegal” activity is *not* like getting a parking/speeding ticket. It’s more like the police taking away your car.
Whatever happened to due process?
Dave Zan says
@Bill
Don’t some registrars or hosts shut down, say, phishing sites without giving some of their owners so-called due process anyway, even seemingly innocent sites that were apparently (?) compromised? Selling counterfeit products is no seriously different than phishing other than perhaps scale, isn’t it?
Just wondering…
Bill Sweetman says
@ Dave,
Good question, however I am not in the business of monitoring or speculating on what “some registrars or hosts” do. You’d have to ask them that. ;+)
Dave Zan says
@Bill
Oh definitely. I guess I find it kinda funny how one for a registrar asks about due process if/when their own company probably (?) does the same if called upon to shut down phishing sites.
But…to each their own.