The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, has proposed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would give the US Department of Justice (DoJ) powers to "crack down" on "websites that are dedicated to making infringing goods and services available".
Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the proposal endangers users' and site publishers' rights to free expression.
"This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time – by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites," said an EFF statement.
"This is a censorship bill that runs roughshod over freedom of speech on the Internet," it said. "Free speech is vitally important to democracy, which is why the government is restricted from suppressing speech except in very specific, narrowly-tailored situations. But this bill is the polar opposite of narrow – not only in the broad way that it tries to define a site 'dedicated to infringing activities,' but also in the solution that it tries to impose – a block on a whole domain, and not just the infringing part of the site."
The proposed law would create a list of websites which internet service providers (ISPs), web hosts and other intermediaries would have to block access to on the Attorney General's order, the EFF said. It said that another list of sites the DoJ suspected of infringing would be produced which could be blocked by intermediaries with legal immunity.
Add new comment