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For those of you who can't read legalese, publicknowledge.org summarizes the bill thusly
publicknowledge.org
It proposes to target websites that distribute infringing materials by having the Attorney General shut down their domain names (if their registrars or registries are US-based), or by telling US-based ISPs and other online providers not to connect users to accused websites that have foreign-based domain names.
full text of this article can be found here.
I for one think this bill sucks. My biggest problem with this bill gives the AG too much power with too broad a mandate to use it.
A. the definition of what sites that can be completely blocked includes the very vague phrase "enable or facilitate infringement." The bill specifically mentions providing a link as constituting facilitation. This is total baloney. A site should not be blocked for providing a link to another site that has infringing content.
B. Blocking a whole fricken domain name due to the discovery of infringing material on a site is too broad and imprecise a measure to counter infringement. You end up blocking perfectly legitimate, first amendment-protected content as well as the infringing content. Take, for example, the BT tracker, Demonoid. While some users certainly upload torrents that enable the sharing of infringing files, many artists distribute samples of their work for free using this site.
