Internet Blacklist Back In Congress

Adrian Lopez writes "A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in Congress this fall by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). It would grant the federal government the power to block access to any Web domain that is found to host copyrighted material without permission."

Re:Before I even clicks the links in summary...

[geekoid]

You might want to read up. This isn't 'blacklisting' the way you are likely to think about it. This is removing items from the Root DNS server.

Re:Obama will not veto this.

[Kethinov]

I have always found it depressing that of all the possible issues the Democrats and Republicans could unify over, that this issue was one of the few. Both major parties are for strong copyright and strong punishments for noncommercial infringement.

Speaking as someone who strongly supports the Democrats on all other issues, my party is dead wrong on the copyright issue. It seems as though the only political party that understands the internet is the Libertarian party.

As such, I believe copyright law needs a strong injection of Libertarian ideology, or we're gonna get stuck with our own version of the Great Firewall of China some day. 1984 was not supposed to be a guidebook for how to run a society...

Re:Obama will not veto this.

[cmiller173]

You understand that the newly elected don't officially take over until January right? That is why the OP called it "the lame-duck session of Congress". They are trying to push this through while they can.