The Case Against COICA: "This is an internet censorship bill with a blacklist"

[Better Believe It]

The COICA Internet Censorship and Copyright Bill

The "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act" (COICA) is an Internet censorship bill which is rapidly making its way through the Senate. Although it is ostensibly focused on copyright infringement, an enormous amount of noninfringing content, including political and other speech, could disappear off the Web if it passes.

The main mechanism of the bill is to interfere with the Internet's domain name system (DNS), which translates names like "http://eff.org" or "http://nytimes.com" into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. The bill creates a blacklist of censored domains; the Attorney General can ask a court to place any website on the blacklist if infringement is "central" to the purpose of the site.

If this bill passes, the list of targets could conceivably include hosting websites such as Dropbox, MediaFire and Rapidshare; MP3 blogs and mashup/remix music sites like SoundCloud, MashupTown and Hype Machine ; and sites that discuss and make the controversial political and intellectual case for piracy, like pirate-party.us, p2pnet, InfoAnarchy, Slyck and ZeroPaid . Indeed, had this bill been passed five or ten years ago, YouTube might not exist today. In other words, the collateral damage from this legislation would be enormous. (Why would all these sites be targets?)

There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law. This act would allow the Attorney General to censor sites even when no court has found they have infringed copyright or any other law.

For more information please visit:

https://www.eff.org/coica


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The Case Against COICA
Legislative Analysis by Peter Eckersley
November 18, 2010

EFF is deeply disappointed to report that the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the COICA Internet censorship bill this morning, despite bipartisan opposition, and countless experts pointing out how it would be ineffective, unconstitutional, bad for innovation and the tech economy, and would break the Internet.

Notably, Senator Feinstein and Senator Coburn commented on the need for more work on elements of the bill — an important consideration as negotiations shift to the Senate at large. The bill is unlikely to come up again until next session, and in the meantime, we look forward to educating Congress about the dangers in COICA, and joining others to oppose this or any other infringement "solution" that threatens lawful speech online.


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In September, digital rights advocates and Internet engineers helped to delay the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), a terrible bill that would have allowed the Attorney General to censor the Internet in the name of copyright enforcement. Now that the November elections are over, COICA is back on the Senate Judiciary Committee schedule for markup this Thursday and could pass out of committee during the "lame duck" session of Congress.

To recap, COICA gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be “central” to the purpose of the site. Rather than just targeting files that actually infringe copyright law, COICA's "nuclear-option" design has the government blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system — a reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech.

Under current law, Hollywood already has powerful tools to police online infringement, such as the DMCA takedown process, that were the result of years of negotiation and include protections against abuse. COICA, by contrast, is being pushed though without adequate review or attention to its dangerous effects.

This bill does not merit passage to the full Senate. Neither the Judiciary Committee nor the entertainment industry should be standing behind legislation that meddles so deeply with the Internet's architecture and is so broadly hostile to freedom of speech and innovation. Instead, we need to focus on clearing the licensing roadblocks that are preventing businesses, new and old alike, from offering any paid, legal services that are as comprehensive as the allegedly infringing ones.

Read the full article at:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica


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96 prominent Internet engineers sent a joint letter the US Senate Judiciary Committee, declaring their opposition to the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA). The text of the letter is below.

September 28th, 2010

An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the Senate Judiciary Committee

We, the undersigned, have played various parts in building a network called the Internet. We wrote and debugged the software; we defined the standards and protocols that talk over that network. Many of us invented parts of it. We're just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.

We are writing to oppose the Committee's proposed new Internet censorship and copyright bill. If enacted, this legislation will risk fragmenting the Internet's global domain name system (DNS), create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure. In exchange for this, the bill will introduce censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties' ability to communicate.

All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but this bill will be particularly egregious in that regard because it causes entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under this bill. These problems will be enough to ensure that alternative name-lookup infrastructures will come into widespread use, outside the control of US service providers but easily used by American citizens. Errors and divergences will appear between these new services and the current global DNS, and contradictory addresses will confuse browsers and frustrate the people using them. These problems will be widespread and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We can't have a free and open Internet without a global domain name system that sits above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US suddenly begins to use its central position in the DNS for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

Senators, we believe the Internet is too important and too valuable to be endangered in this way, and implore you to put this bill aside.

The letter is signed by the following:

David P. Reed, who played an important role in the development of TCP/IP and designed the UDP protocol that makes real-time applications like VOIP possible today; former Professor at MIT
Paul Vixie, author of BIND, the most widely-used DNS server software, and President of the Internet Systems Consortium
Jim Gettys, editor of the HTTP/1.1 protocol standards, which we use to do everything on the Web.
Bill Jennings, who was VP of Engineering at Cisco for 10 years and responsible for building much of the hardware and embedded software for Cisco's core router products and high-end Ethernet switches.
Steve Bellovin, one of the originators of USENET; found and fixed numerous security flaws in DNS; Professor at Columbia.
Gene Spafford, who analyzed the first catastrophic Internet worm and made many subsequent contributions to computer security; Professor at Purdue.
Dan Kaminsky, renowned security researcher who in 2008 found and helped to fix a grave security vulnerability in the entire planet's DNS systems.
David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, which offers alternative DNS services for enhanced security.
John Vittal, Created the first full email client and the email standards.
Esther Dyson, chairman, EDventure Holdings; founding chairman, ICANN; former chairman, EFF; active investor in many start-ups that support commerce, news and advertising on the Internet; director, Sunlight Foundation
Brian Pinkerton, Founder of WebCrawler, the first big Internet search engine.
Dr. Craig Partridge, Architect of how email is routed through the Internet, and designed the world's fastest router in the mid 1990s.
David J. Farber, helped to conceive and organize the major American research networks CSNET, NSFNet, and NREN; former chief technologist at the FCC; Professor at Carnegie Mellon; EFF board member.
John Gilmore, co-designed BOOTP (RFC 951), which became DHCP, the way you get an IP address when you plug into an Ethernet or get on a WiFi access point. Current EFF board member.
Karl Auerbach, Former North American publicly elected member of the Board of Directors of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Paul Timmins, designed and runs the multi-state network of a medium sized telephone and internet company in the Midwest.
Lou Katz, I was the founder and first President of the Usenix Association, which published much of the academic research about the Internet, opening networking to commercial and other entities.
Walt Daniels, IBM’s contributor to MIME, the mechanism used to add attachments to emails.
Gordon E. Peterson II, designer and implementer of the first commercially available LAN system, and member of the Anti-Spam Research Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
John Adams, operations engineer at Twitter, signing as a private citizen
Alex Rubenstein, founder of Net Access Corporation. We are an Internet Service Provider for nearly 15 years, and I have served on the ARIN AC.
Roland Alden, Originator of the vCard interchange standard; builder of Internet infrastructure in several developing countries.
Lyndon Nerenberg, Author/inventor of RFC3516 IMAP BINARY and contributor to the core IMAP protocol and extension.
James Hiebert, I performed early experiments using TCP Anycast to track routing instability in Border Gateway Protocol.
Dr. Richard Clayton, designer of Turnpike, widely used Windows-based Internet access suite. Prominent Computer Security researcher at Cambridge University.
Brandon Ross, designed the networks of MindSpring and NetRail.
James Ausman, helped build the first commercial web site and worked on the Apache web server that runs two-thirds of the Web.
Michael Laufer, worked on the different networks they dealt with including the Milnet, other US Govt nets, and regional (NSF) nets that became the basis of the Internet. Also designed, built, and deployed the first commercial VPN infrastructure (I think) as well as dial up nets that were part of AOL and many other things.
Janet Plato, I worked for Advanced Network and Service from 1992 or so running the US Internet core before it went public, and then doing dial engineering until we were acquired by UUNet. While at UUnet I worked in EMEA Engineering where I helped engineer their European STM16 backbone.
Thomas Hutton, I was one of the original architects of CERFnet - one of the original NFSnet regional networks that was later purchased by AT&T. In addition, I am currently chair of the CENIC HPR (High Performance Research) technical committee. This body directs CENIC in their managment and evolution of Calren2, the California research and education network.
Phil Lapsley, co-author of the Internet Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), RFC 977, and developer of the NNTP reference implementation in 1986 ... still in use today almost 25 years later.
Stephen Wolff. While at NSF I nurtured, led, and funded the NSFNET from its infancy until by 1994 I had privatized, commercialized, and decommissioned the NSFNET Backbone; these actions stimulated the commercial activity that led to the Internet of today.
Bob Schulman , worked on University of Illinois’ ANTS system in the Center for Advanced Computation in 1976 when ANTS connected a few hosts to the ARPAnet.
Noel D. Humphreys, As a lawyer I worked on the American Bar Association committee that drafted guidelines for use of public key encryption infrastructure in the early days of the internet.
Ramaswamy P. Aditya, I built various networks and web/mail content and application hosting providers including AS10368 (DNAI) which is now part of AS6079 (RCN), which I did network engineering and peering for, and then I did network engineering for AS25 (UC Berkeley), followed and now I do network engineering for AS177-179 and others (UMich).
Haudy Kazemi, Implemented Internet connections (from the physical lines, firewalls, and routers to configuring DNS and setting up Internet-facing servers) to join several companies to the Internet and enable them to provide digital services to others.
Mike Meyer, I helped debug the NNTP software in the 80s, and desktop web browsers and servers in the 90s.
Richard S. Kulawiec, 30 years designing/operating academic/commercial/ISP systems and networks.
Michael Alexander, I have been involved with networking since before the Internet existed. Among other things I was part of the team that connected the MTS mainframe at Michigan to the Merit Network. I was also involved in some of the early work on Email with Mailnet at MIT and wrote network drivers for IP over ISDN for Macintosh computers.
Gordon Cook, I led the OTA study between 1990 and 1992 and since April 1992 have been self employed as editor publisher of the cook report.
Thomas Donnelly, I help support the infrastructure for the world’s most widely used web server control panel.
Peter Rubenstein, I helped design and run the ISP transit backbone of AOL, the ATDN.
Owen DeLong, I am an elected member of the ARIN Advisory Council. I am the resource holder of record on a number of domains. I have been active on the internet for more than 20 years. I was involved in getting some of the first internet connections into primary and secondary schools before commercial providers like AT&T started sponsoring events like Net-Day.
Erik Fair, co-author, RFC 1627, RFC 977, former [email protected].
Tony Rall, I was involved in providing Internet access to the IBM corporation - from the late 80s until last year. I worked within the company to ensure that Internet access was as "open" and transparent as possible.
Bret Clark, Spectra Access. We are New Hampshire's largest wireless Internet service providers and have built a large footprint of Internet Access for businesses in New Hampshire.
Paul Fleming, Run as33182 as a large hosting provider (5gbps+). develop monitoring software suite.
David M. Kristol, Co-author, RFCs 2109, 2965 ("HTTP State Management") Contributor, RFC 2616 ("Hypertext Transfer Protocol")
Anthony G. Lauck, I helped design and standardize routing protocols and local area network protocols and served on the Internet Architecture Board.
Judith Axler Turner, I started the first NSF-approved commercial service on the Internet, the Chronicle of Higher Education's job ads, in 1993.
Jason Novinger , I was the Network Administrator for Lawrence Freenet, a small wireless ISP in Lawrence, KS.
Dustin Jurman, I am the CEO of Rapid Systems Corporation a Network Service Provider, and Systems builder responsible for 60 Million of NOFA funding.
Blake Pfankuch, Over the years I have implemented thousands if not tens of thousands of webservers, DNS servers and supporting infrastructure.
Dave Shambley, retired engineer (EE -rf-wireless- computers) and active in the design of web site and associated graphics.
Stefan Schmidt, I had sole technical responsibility for running all of the freenet.de / AS5430 DNS Infrastructure with roughly 120.000 Domains and approximately 1.5 million DSL subscribers for the last 9 years and have been actively involved in the development of the PowerDNS authoritative and recursive DNS Servers for the last 4 years.
Dave Skinner, I was an early provider of net connectivity in central Oregon. Currently I provide hosting services.
Richard Hartmann, Backbone manager and project manager at Globalways AG, a German ISP.
Curtis Maurand, founder of a small internet company in Maine in 1994. started delivering low cost broadband to municipalities and businesses before acquired by Time-Warner.
James DeLeskie, internetMCI Sr. Network Engineer, Teleglobe Principal Network Architect
Bernie Cosell, I was a member of the team at BBN that wrote the code for the original ARPAnet IMP. I also did a big chunk of the redesign of the TELNET protocol .
Eric Brunner-Williams, I contributed to rfc1122 and 1123, and co-authored rfc2629, Domain Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations, and authored the "sponsored registry" proposal, implemented as .aero, .coop and .museum, and assisted with .cat, authored the privacy policy for HTTP cookies, and contribute to both the IETF and to ICANN.
Nathan Eisenberg, Atlas Networks Senior System Administrator, manager of 25K sq. ft. of data centers which provide services to Starbucks, Oracle, and local state
Jon Loeliger, I have implemented OSPF, one of the main routing protocols used to determine IP packet delivery. At other companies, I have helped design and build the actual computers used to implement core routers or storage delivery systems. At another company, we installed network services (T-1 lines and ISP service) into Hotels and Airports across the country.
Tim Rutherford, managed DNS (amongst other duties) for an C4.NET since 1997.
Ron Lachman , I am co-founder of Ultra DNS. I am co-founder of Sandpiper networks (arguably, inventor of the CDN) I am "namesake" founder of Lachman TCP/IP (millions of copies of TCP on Unix System V and many other other platforms) Joint developer of NFS along with Sun MicroSystems.
Jeromie Reeves, Network Administrator & Consultant. I have a small couple hundred user Wireless ISP and work with or have stakes in many other networks.
Alia Atlas, I designed software in a core router (Avici) and have various RFCs around resiliency, MPLS, and ICMP.
Marco Coelho, As the owner of Argon Technologies Inc., a company that has been in the business of providing Internet service for the past 13 years.
David J. Bowie, intimately involved in deployment and maintenance of the Arpanet as it evolved from 16 sites to what it is today.
Scott Rodgers, I have been an ISP on Cape Cod Massachusetts for 17 years and I agree that this bill is poison.
William Schultz, for the past 10 years I've worked on hundreds of networks around the US and have worked for a major voice and data carrier. I do not agree with Internet censorship in any degree, at all.
Rebecca Hargrave Malamud, helped advance many large-scale Internet projects, and have been working the web since its invention.
Kelly J. Kane - Shared web hosting network operator. Tom DeReggi, 15yr ISP/WISP veteran, RapidDSL. Doug Moeller, Chief Technical Officer, Autonet Mobile, Inc.
David Boyes, Operations Coordinator, SESQUInet, First mainframe web server, First Internet tools for VM/CMS, Caretaker, NSS1, Caretaker ENSS3, Author, Chronos Appt Management Protocol, Broadcast operator, IETF telepresence, IETF 28/29
Jim Warren, I was one of Vint Cerf’s grad students and worked for a bit on the early protocols for the old ARPAnet ... back before it became the DARPAnet
Christopher Nielsen, I have worked for several internet startups, building everything from email and usenet infrastructure to large-scale clusters. I am currently a Sr. Operations Engineer for a product and shopping search engine startup.
David Barrett, Founder and CEO of Expensify, former engineering manager for Akamai. I helped build Red Swoosh, which delivers large files for legitimate content owners, and was acquired by Akamai, which hosts 20% of the internet by powering the world's top 20,000 websites.
David Hiers, I have designed dozens of Internet edge networks, several transit networks, and currently operate a VOIP infrastructure for 20,000 business subscribers.
Jay Reitz, Co-founder and VP of Engineering of hubpages.com, the 60th largest website in the US with 14M monthly US visitors.
Peter H. Schmidt, I co-founded the company (Midnight Networks) that created the protocol test software (ANVL) that ensured routers from all vendors could actually interoperate to implement the Internet.
Harold Sinclair, design, build, and operate DNS, Mail, and Application platforms on the Internet.
John Todd, I invented and operate a DNS-based telephony directory "freenum.org" which uses the DNS to replace telephone numbers.
Christopher Gerstorff, technician for a wireless broadband internet provider, Rapid Systems, Inc.
Robert Rodgers, Engineer at Juniper and Cisco. Worked on routers and mobile systems.
Illene Jones, I have had a part in creating the software that runs on the servers.
Brandon Applegate, I have worked in the ISP sector since the mid-1990s as a network engineer.
Leslie Carr, Craigslist Network Engineer
Doug Dodds, wrote several pieces of software for ARPANet in the 1970s, including BBN TENEX User Telnet and the HERMES email system.
Jamie Rishaw, Formerly, network architect to Big-10 Universities, the Dalai Lama, NFL and Playboy. Currently active in DNS Security steering and planning, and Global Network Operations.
Jeff Hodges, Protocol Architect: LDAPv3, SAML, Liberty Alliance ID-FF ID-WSF
Bob Hingen, worked at BBN and helped build the Arpanet and early Internet. I have been very active in the IETF and am the co-inventor of IPv6.
David M. Miller, CTO / Exec VP for DNS Made Easy (largest IP Anycast Managed Enterprise DNS Provider in the world by number of domain names served).
Ben Kamen, started an Atari based BBS in 1982 and has worked with networks ever since.
Brian Lloyd, key contributor to the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) used by with modems to connect to the Internet; co-wrote the California Department of Education's, K-12 Network Technology Planning Guide in the early 1990s
Steven Back, network administrator for many domain names related to medical studies
Brad Templeton, founder of ClariNet Communications, the world's first ".com" company and the net's first online newspaper; EFF board member.
Edward Henigin, CTO of Texas.net (San Antonio's first ISP founded in 1994), Data Foundry (Data Center outsourcing), Giganews (#1 ranked Usenet provider) and Golden Frog (Encryption service).

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/open-letter


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November 16, 2010
Law Professors’ Letter in Opposition to S. 3804
(Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act)

Read the letter at:

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/coica_files/Professors%27%20Letter%20re%20COICA%20and%20Signatories.pdf

Signatories

Zoe Argento
Assistant Professor
Roger Williams University School of Law
Derek E. Bambauer
Associate Professor of Law
Brooklyn Law School
Tom W. Bell
Professor of Law
Chapman University School of Law
Annemarie Bridy
Associate Professor
University of Idaho College of Law
Dan L. Burk
Chancellor's Professor of Law
University of California, Irvine
Adam Candeub
Associate Professor, College of Law
Director, IP & Communications Law Program
Michigan State University
Michael A. Carrier
Professor of Law
Rutgers School of LawCamden
Michael W. Carroll
Professor of Law and Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual
Property
American University, Washington College of Law
3 Institutional affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.
Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 9
Brian W. Carver
Assistant Professor, School of Information
University of California, Berkeley
Ralph D. Clifford
Professor of Law
Univ. of Massachusetts School of Law
Julie E. Cohen
Professor
Georgetown University Law Center
Alexander S. Dent
The George Washington University (Anthropology)
David S. Levine
Assistant Professor
Elon University School of Law & Fellow, Center for Internet and Society,
Stanford Law School
Anthony T. Falzone
Lecturer in Law & Executive Director, Fair Use Project
Stanford Law School
David J. Farber
Distinguished Career Professor of
Computer Science and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Thomas G. Field, Jr.
Professor of Law
UNH School of Law
Sean Flynn
Associate Director
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
American University Washington College of Law
Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 10
A. Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons
Associate Professor
College of Law, University of Toledo
Eric Goldman
Associate Professor & Director, High Tech Law Institute
Santa Clara University School of Law
James Grimmelmann
Associate Professor of Law
New York Law School
TyAnna Herrington
Georgia Tech University
Robert A. Heverly
Assistant Professor of Law
Albany Law School of Union University
Gary Hull
Director, Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace
Duke University
Dan Hunter
Professor of Law & Director, Institute for Information Law & Policy, New York
Law School
Adjunct Associate Professor of Legal Studies, The Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania
David R. Johnson
Visiting Professor of Law
New York Law School
Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 11
Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis,
Law Lecturer, Director of Postgraduate Instructional Courses
Director of LLM Information Technology and Telecommunications Law
The Law School, University of Strathclyde
Cedric Manara
Associate Professor of Law
EDHEC Business School
Timothy C. McGee
Associate Director for Faculty Development
Rider University
Mark McKenna
Associate Professor of Law
University of Notre Dame Law School
Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT & Professor, Linguistics Program
Wayne State University
Ira Nathenson
Associate Professor of Law
St. Thomas University School of Law
Efthimios Parasidis
Assistant Professor of Law
Saint Louis University School of Law
Aaron Perzanowski
Assistant Professor
Wayne State University Law School
Malla Pollock
Coauthor,
Callmann on Unfair Competition, Trademarks & Monopolies

Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 12
David G. Post
I. Herman Stern Professor of Law
Beasley School of Law, Temple University
Connie Davis Powell
Assistant Professor of Law
Baylor University School of Law
Pamela Samuelson
Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law
Berkeley Law School
Peter Sands, PhD, JD
Associate Professor and Associate Chair of English
University of WisconsinMilwaukee
Susan K. Sell
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Director, Institute for Global and International Studies
The George Washington University
Wendy Seltzer
Fellow, Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
and Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
Jessica Silbey
Associate Professor of Law
Suffolk University Law School
Alberto J. Cerda Silva
Professor in Cyber Law
University of Chile Law School
Dr. Daithí Mac Síthigh
Lecturer in Internet Law
University of East Anglia, UK
Law Professors’ COICA Letter
Page 13
Olivier Sylvain
Associate Professor
Fordham University School of Law
Rebecca Tushnet
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law Center
Deborah Tussey
Professor
OCU School of Law
Kimberlee Weatherall
Senior Lecturer in Law
The University of Queensland, Australia.
Jonathan Weinberg
Professor of Law
Wayne State University
Peter K. Yu
Kern Family Chair in Intellectual Property Law
Drake University Law School
Jonathan Zittrain
Professor, Harvard Law School


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[BrklynLiberal]

1. If repukes are for it..I would take a very long and careful look at it and all its consequences.

[Better Believe It]

2. Letter to U.S. Senate from Human Rights Advocates and Press Freedom Organizations

October 26, 2010

Letter from Human Rights Advocates and Press Freedom Organizations
Human rights advocates and press freedom organizations express concern about domestic and global censorship problems in COICA.

October 26, 2010
Chairman Patrick J. Leahy
Ranking Member Jeff Sessions
United States Senate United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510 Washington, DC 20510

Re: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA)

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Sessions:

The undersigned advocates and human rights and press freedom organizations write to express our deep
concern about S. 3804, the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA). While we
sympathize with the underlying goals of S. 3804, we believe that key provisions in the bill will result in serious
unintended consequences for freedom of expression and human rights on the Internet, undermining global
Internet freedom abroad. We urge you to refrain from moving this legislation until these issues are fully
examined and addressed.

In its essence, the bill would enshrine in US law a legal process that would force Internet service providers (ISPs)
to block certain communications based on content, oblige registry operators to lock domains for the entire
world, and create an extrajudicial blacklist of suspected content—setting a precedent that we believe would
reverberate around the globe. Over forty countries now filter or block content on the Internet to some degree,
and that number is growing. Even more problematic, filtering is no longer the sole province of pariah states;
liberal democracies like Australia are also considering mandatory filtering regimes.1 Historically, the United
States has been the bulwark against censorship and government imposed blocking of Internet content. If the
United States sets the precedent that any country can order the blocking of a domain name of a foreign website
or seize such a domain (thus taking down content for the world), it will forfeit the high ground in this global
debate, and the effort to secure the rights of Internet users and citizen journalists around the world to speak
and access legal content may be irreparably harmed.

The human rights community has strongly condemned countries that use the tactics proposed in COICA to take
down content for a site’s global user base. In Turkey, for example, YouTube has been blocked for several years
because it refuses to disable access to content illegal under local law for the site’s global user base.2 Advocates
in Turkey have been working to rescind this order. Yet this bill would ratify global content blocking by allowing
the Attorney General with a court order to direct a registry operator or registrar located in the US to disable
access to a domain name for the global Internet. While the technical mechanisms for achieving this may vary,
the effect is the same: COICA would stand for the proposition that countries have the right to insist on removal
of content from the global Internet in service to the exigencies of domestic law. Nothing in principle would limit
application of this approach solely to copyright infringement.

COICA could also lead many states, including liberal democracies, to adopt similar policies directed at US
content, taking it down worldwide. Content that is fully protected under the First Amendment remains proscribable in other countries, such as hate speech in France and Germany, and local access to such speech
remains a frustration for governments in those countries.3 And of course, COICA’s approach could be misused in
countries where the rule of law is weak or entirely absent. As Microsoft’s recent experiences in Russia have
revealed, governments can exploit copyright laws as a pretext for suppression of political speech in other parts
of the world.4 Further, once the US sends the green light, the use of domain locking or ISP domain blocking to
silence other kinds of content considered unlawful in a given country—from criticism of the monarchy in
Thailand to any speech that “harms the interests of the nation” in China—could metastasize, impacting bloggers,
citizen journalists, democracy movements, human rights advocates, and ordinary users all over the world. For
countries already engaged in ISP blocking, US precedent would legitimize the actions of their governments,
undermining the US government’s ability to criticize such practices. And the precedent that domain locking or
blocking can be encouraged through an extrajudicial blacklist only intensifies this risk.

Finally, directing ISPs to block content through DNS tampering directly undermines the US government’s
commitment to advancing one global Internet. In her February speech at the Newseum, Secretary of State
Clinton decried the development of “a new information curtain [] descending across much of the world,” and
declared the United States’ support “for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge
and ideas.”5 If many other countries adopt COICA’s approach—and there is little doubt that they will—it will
worsen the balkanization of the Internet, where the information any individual can access will depend entirely
on where that individual sits. Freedom of expression and association are universal rights; further balkanization
of the Internet undermines these rights and threatens the potential of the Internet as a powerful tool for
advancing human rights and democracy.

In all, this bill is in tension with current US foreign policy and could have grave repercussions for global human
rights and the free and open Internet. We sympathize with frustration over copyright enforcement in a global
environment, but Congress must not enact COICA (S. 3804) without fully addressing its impact on other core US
values and policy objectives. We look forward to working with you to identify ways to address legitimate
concerns about copyright infringement without undermining Internet freedom and user rights.

Respectfully submitted,

American Civil Liberties Union
Center for Democracy & Technology
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Freedom House
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
Rebecca MacKinnon
Reporters Sans Frontières
World Press Freedom Committee

https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/coica_files/COICA_human_rights_letter.pdf