Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, which allows the Attorney General to summarily blacklist internet domain names that are “dedicated to infringing activities.” Meaning, of course, copyright infringement. Tim Lee is unimpressed:
Under COICA […] the courts would issue orders not against the owners of the domain name (who may be overseas) but against domain-name registrars and the operators of DNS servers here in the United States. This means that thousands of systems administrators would be required to maintain a large and constantly-changing list of blacklisted domains. This is a significant and unfair administrative burden on private parties who have absolutely no connection to infringing activities.
The legislation falls far short of constitutional due process requirements. Legal injunctions would be issued upon the attorney general’s mere accusation of “infringing activities.” Not only would the owner of the domain name not have an opportunity to contest the allegations, he would not even have to be notified. And the parties who would receive notice under the legislation—DNS registrars and server administrators—will typically have no knowledge of or connection to the accused domain, which means they would have neither the knowledge or the motivation to dispute unreasonable orders.
This, apparently, is something important enough to try to ram through the lame duck session. That shows a truly excellent sense of priorities, doesn’t it?
