Pull The Plug on Websites

From C-Net Politics and Law:

A controversial proposal allowing the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy is closer to becoming a federal law.

After a flurry of last-minute lobbying from representatives of content providers including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a Senate committee approved the measure today by a unanimous vote.

In the last week, support for the bill known as COICA, for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, broadened beyond groups traditionally active in online copyright disputes to include the Newspaper Association of America, which said the legislation was needed because online piracy “undermines the investments that newspapers make in journalism.” Labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, argued that American workers “have suffered significant harm due to theft of copyrighted and trademarked goods.”

An ad appeared in a newspaper targeting Capitol Hill yesterday signed by groups including Major League Baseball, the NFL, Nintendo, and Viacom. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce pressed Congress to move quickly, and even Rob McKenna, Washington state attorney general, signed on to the effort.

“Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from de-valuing American property,” Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman, said after today’s vote. “We congratulate Chairman Leahy and Senator Hatch for their leadership on this bill and to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its action today.” (Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, are cosponsors of COICA.)

The sentiment is not universal: Since its introduction in September, COICA has alarmed engineers and civil liberties groups, who say that it could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger even some legitimate Web sites. Its wording says that any domain name “dedicated to infringing activities” could find itself in the U.S. Department of Justice’s prosecutorial crosshairs.

Peter Eckersley, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote earlier this week that the bill will create a 1950-style Hollywood blacklist with the government deciding which Web sites are legitimate or not. The federal government will be forced “into the swamp of trying to decide which websites should be blacklisted and which ones shouldn’t,” Eckersley said. “And they’re going to discover that the line between copyright infringement and free political speech can be awfully murky.”

At the same time, a group of law professors wrote an open letter (PDF) to the Senate saying the law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment and “would set a dangerous precedent with potentially serious consequences for free expression and global Internet freedom.”

From Tech Dirt: (Party affiliation on the list is something I added. It appears taking away our freedoms goes down both party lines)

…the lame duck Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to move forward with censoring the internet via the COICA bill — despite a bunch of law professors explaining to them how this law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. What’s really amazing is that many of the same Senators have been speaking out against internet censorship in other countries, yet they happily vote to approve it here because it’s seen as a way to make many of their largest campaign contributors happy. There’s very little chance that the bill will actually get passed by the end of the term but, in the meantime, we figured it might be useful to highlight the 19 Senators who voted to censor the internet this morning:

• Patrick J. Leahy (D)– Vermont
• Herb Kohl (D)– Wisconsin
• Jeff Sessions (R) — Alabama
• Dianne Feinstein (D) — California
• Orrin G. Hatch (R)– Utah
• Russ Feingold (D)– Wisconsin
• Chuck Grassley (R)– Iowa
• Arlen Specter (D) — Pennsylvania
• Jon Kyl (R) — Arizona
• Chuck Schumer (D)– New York
• Lindsey Graham (R)– South Carolina
• Dick Durbin — Illinois
• John Cornyn — Texas
• Benjamin L. Cardin — Maryland
• Tom Coburn — Oklahoma
• Sheldon Whitehouse — Rhode Island
• Amy Klobuchar — Minnesota
• Al Franken — Minnesota
• Chris Coons — Delaware

This should be a list of shame. You would think that our own elected officials would understand the First Amendment but, apparently, they have no problem turning the US into one of the small list of authoritarian countries that censors internet content it does not like (in this case, content some of its largest campaign contributors do not like). We already have laws in place to deal with infringing content, so don’t buy the excuse that this law is about stopping infringement. This law takes down entire websites based on the government’s say-so. First Amendment protections make clear that if you are going to stop any specific speech, it has to be extremely specific speech. This law has no such restrictions. It’s really quite unfortunate that these 19 US Senators are the first American politicians to publicly vote in favor of censoring speech in America.

Update: Some people in the comments are claiming this is not about censorship, so I’ve put up a new post explaining in detail why this bill is all about censorship.