New US Bill WIll Force ISPs Close Down Piracy Sites

The new proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) may provide the Department of Justice with an accelerated process for blocking websites hosting unauthorized copyrighted content. It would include the ability to block the import into the country of products offered by online websites devoted to infringing activities.

Recently Senators announced they want to introduce a bill able to solve the growing problem of online piracy and counterfeiting. A group of Senators believe the proposed Bill would give the Department of Justice the instrument it needs for finding and closing down online sites dedicated to providing access to illegal downloads or sale of counterfeit goods and copyrighted material. The latter part is a cause for concern for many, as it refers to the very heart of non-commercial copyright violation in the Internet. In fact, unauthorized peer-to-peer and streaming online services are not like the websites that traffic in physical counterfeit goods, and therefore are not making any profit. The controversial issue of the commercial and non-commercial infringement is again discussed in connection with a new Bill, which ignores this distinction.

The tool the new Bill would give the Department of Justice in order to address the abovementioned trouble is quite heavy handed. Although the Department has always been able to block any domestic infringing sites, it would now be able to prosecute foreign sites as well, in its attempt to prevent the import into the country of goods sold by infringing websites in case it harms US copyright owners.

The new Act, if enforced, would provide courts with the power to force ISPs to block access to any sites hosting unauthorized material by American citizens. For rights owners like the RIAA and MPAA it would be pennies from heaven, and the RIAA has already expressed its happiness with the suggestion.

But the problem is that the sponsors of the proposal still believe that commercial and non-commercial violation is the same, while they definitely aren’t: one can see a big difference between sharing material to enjoy it for free and unfairly profiting from the stolen copyrighted works. Individual file-sharers never profit from file-sharing, so they two can’t be linked together. If the Bill is enforced, the chances are that the US will get a filtering system resembling one of China, which is not even funny.