ANTI-PIRACY BILL PASSES KEY SENATE COMMITTEE

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) sets up a system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the site. This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"We are disappointed that the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning chose to disregard the concerns of public-interest groups, Internet engineers, Internet companies, human-rights groups and law professors in approving a bill that could do great harm to the public and to the Internet," said Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn, who pledged to craft a "more narrowly tailored bill" next year to deal with "rogue websites."

But the content industries don't mind the current version. Bob Pisano, who runs the MPAA, trotted out the "2.4 million hard working, middle-class jobs in all 50 states" that his industry creates. "For these workers and their families, digital theft means declining incomes, lost jobs and reduced health and retirement benefits," he said. "Unfortunately, this means nothing to the operators of rogue websites who seek to benefit illegally from the hard work of others."

The industry is well aware that "censorship" doesn't go down well with many Americans, so it has been playing up the "free speech protections" in the bill lately. RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol made sure to stress the point again this morning.

"With this first vote, Congress has begun to strike at the lifeline of foreign scam sites, while protecting free speech and boosting the legal online marketplace," he said. "Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from de-valuing American property."

That last jibe is the sort of comment made by those who can't understand why, say, people accused of horrific crimes still get defense lawyers. ("Why do you want murderers to go free?") It's sad to see Bainwol resort to it. As we noted earlier this week, we have concerns about this approach that are premised in large part on the content industries' almost comically misguided attempts to lock down or shutter innovative technologies and websites that turn out in fact to be legal and hugely useful—like the VCR, HD radio, MP3 players, HDTV, DAT, and YouTube.

Giving that industry a special process, one that doesn't apply to sites that traffic in other sorts of illegal-in-the-US-activity, raises concerns that have nothing to do with a love of widespread piracy. COICA could censor even sites that "enable or facilitate a violation" of copyright, it mucks about with DNS, and it actually requires the US Attorney General to keep a list of "naughty" sites even though no action has been taken against them. There has to be a more careful approach. [Ars Technica]