Senate bill gives Government power to blacklist websites

Senate, backed by movie studios and other large copyright holders, has proposed a new bill that would essentially disable allegedly copyright-infringing websites.

The "Protect IP Act" would empowed the U.S. Department of Justice to seek a court order against such websites, and serve that order to search engines, DNS providers, as well as advertising companies - which would in turn be required to "expeditiously" make the target website invisible and delete any links to it.

Any copyright holder could also file a lawsuit and seek to levy a less dramatic form of punishment, blocking only "financial transactions" and "Internet advertising services" from doing business with the suspected infringer.

"Even if the site isn’t itself infringing copyright, if its actions ‘enable or facilitate’ someone else’s infringement, the government can tell ISPs to blacklist your site, and copyright holders can sue to cut your funding."

It is not entirely clear how broad the Protect IP Act's authority would be, however, the bill may allow the DOJ to disable not only file-sharing websites, but also places like WikiLeaks, for example, if they're accused of primarily distributing copyrighted documents.

View the proposed Protect IP Act -here- [PDF]
Read the CNET article -here-
Wired post -here-

• Microsoft outage: CrowdStrike update affects flights, hospitals and businesses globally
• OpenAI debuts mini version of its most powerful model yet
• Music labels sue Verizon for more than $2.6 billion
• Elon Musk confirms the Tesla Robotaxi event has been delayed to October
• Federal court halts reimposed 'net neutrality' rules
• Massive AT&T data breach impacted nearly every single customer