Reply #10: Law Professors' Letter in Opposition to S. 3804

[JackRiddler]

Let's try to put this discussion on a factual basis, shall we? Inform yourselves before you react based on what you think of some politician.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/files/docs/LawProfCOICA.pdf

Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 1
November 16, 2010
Law Professors’ Letter in Opposition to S. 3804
(Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act)
The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to consider a bill that, if enacted, will
have dangerous consequences for free expression online and the integrity of the
Internet's domain name system, and will undermine United States foreign policy and
strong support of Internet freedom abroad.
Summary of the Bill
The current version of the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits
Act (“COICA,” or “the Act”), S. 3804, would authorize the Attorney General to obtain,
upon application to a federal court, injunctions in rem “against the domain name” of
any Internet site “dedicated to infringing activities.” An Internet site will be deemed
“dedicated to infringing activities” if (a) it is “primarily designed,” has “no
demonstrable commercially significant purpose or use other than,” or is “marketed by
its operator,” to offer goods and services in violation of the Copyright Act and/or the
Lanham Act, and (b) the site “engages in” such infringing activities, and those activities,
“taken together,” are “central to the activity” of the site.
These injunctions can issue against entities which are not in any way responsible
for the unlawful content, but which participate in the global Domain Name System
(DNS):
(a) the domain name registrar where the target site’s domain name was
registered;
(b) the domain name registry responsible for maintaining the authoritative
database of names for the target site’s top-level domain; and
(c) any of the thousands of “service providers” (i.e., entities “offering the
transmission, routing, or providing of connections for digital online communications”)
or “operator of a nonauthoritative domain name server” (a category that includes
virtually all service providers, and any operator of network linked to the Internet).
Registrars and registries subject to the injunction will be required to “suspend
operation of,” or “lock,” the specified domain name. Service providers or domain
name server operators will be required to “take technically feasible and reasonable
steps designed to prevent domain name from resolving to that domain name’s
Internet protocol address.”

SNIP