After facing a number of failures while attempting to fight illegal file-sharing, rights owners now decided to try another plan of attack by restricting freedom of online movement. Apart from having seized over a hundred of domains within the ongoing “Operation in Our Sites” campaign, the government is now pushing a suggestion able to drastically escalate the effort.
A new legislation, named “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011,” also known as the “PROTECT IP Act,” would provide the Department of Justice and rights owners with extra instruments against copyright violating sites.
The law will work as the following: if the Department of Justice initiates the lawsuit, the Attorney General is granted the right to force American-based 3rd parties like Internet service providers, search engines, payment processors, and Internet advertising networks to prohibit access to illicit sites or simply stop doing business with them. Meanwhile, if the lawsuit is initiated by a rights owner, the list is limited to payment processors and advertising networks, without ISPs and search engines.
New legislation outlines such “safeguards” as allowing domain name or site operators to petition the court in order to have the orders vacated. However, this can only be done after the fact and the damage done. In other words, it’s like being sentenced before trial.
Another interesting issue is search engine censoring: it actually means that search engines would be forced to censor all kinds of unauthorized content and websites. This may include such illegal websites an online gambling, but it’s unclear whether it would address the services promoting drug usage. Finally, the legislation encourages voluntary censoring of online services reasonable believed to be engaged in infringing activities.
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