The PROTECT IP act, a new US law proposal, will greatly extend last year's COICA internet censorship proposal:
- PROTECT IP is targeted at infringement of rights, so it is targeted at distribution of copyrighted material and counterfeited articles.
- As such there does not seem to be a problem with that, but it remains to be seen how easily this can be stretched. It might be sufficient to find one non compliant item on a site to take action against the entire site. In the past single clips have caused actions against the entire YouTube site.
- PROTECT IP will no longer try to seize domain names, instead it will target intermediate, servicing sites.
- This makes it easier to target sites outside the US.
- Plaintiffs can by simple court order, take direct against revenue sources for these sites (payment clearing and advertisers).
- The site does not have to be notified to be able to defend itself.
- The site is notified when action is taken against them starts, if they have an address in the US.
- There is a procedure to fight the order afterwards.
- If plaintiff completes a procedure at the Department Of Justice that declares that a site is infringing rights, it can also order the site to be removed from search engine results and ISP hosting.
- This is a tactic that is copied from the Great Chinese Firewall.
- PROTECT IP encourages intermediate sites to do self censorship. If Google or Visa stop doing business with a site because they think it is not kosher, they are protected by law
- We have seen such actions by payment providers against WikiLeaks, without any legal order to do so.
- Arbitrary business boycotts will now be legal.
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