The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, also known as Senate bill 3804, was introduced last month and is now causing an uproar in the online community.
The bill, if passed, would not only give the Attorney General the power to remove from the Internet any website that contains copyright-infringing material; it would also grant him the right to remove the entire domain associated with that website.
For example, we've all experienced the following problem:
The new hit song comes out, and we all want to listen to it, but we don't want to pay for it to hear it just once. We go to YouTube, search for the song, find it, and click on the link, only to see a notification that the song or video was taken down due to a copyright claim. Fair enough.
Under the new law, though, the government would be allowed to take down all of YouTube instead of just the one video or song. That's right, no more Antoine Dodson, no more Epic Beard Man, and no more Mr. Chi City, all because Lars Ulrich of Metallica might get mad again when you stream his new song.
Though it isn't the only site that would be affected, YouTube is the example that first comes to mind when discussing this bill. To take down the entire domain because of one user-uploaded copyright infringement would be highly irresponsible. Though we often use it for laughs and entertainment, there are many great things about YouTube that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.
Ninety-six of the people who were most instrumental in creating the Internet and inventing the tools to make it work have formally complained to Senators, telling them that it is crucial to reject the bill.
If the people who know more than anyone else about how the Internet works are worried about this bill, we probably should be worried too.
Their reasons for opposing the bill include the argument that copyright infringement will still go on even once the legislation is passed. The bill does not take into account bittorent or peer-to-peer networks, so all of you Bizarro users can breath a sigh of relief.
Also, the engineers say, deliberate infringers will put the entire infrastructure of the Internet at risk because they will create alternative infrastructures that bypass the DNS (Domain Name System) that the Internet was founded on, putting them outside the control of service providers. The clashing of the different systems would make the Internet almost impossible to use.
The engineers also write that the bill would go against previous claims by the United States to support "a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad." As the U.S. is a leader in maintaining the DNS, excessively censoring the Internet would create a dangerous standard for the entire world.
College students may know better than any other demographic the many wonders of the Internet. We urge the Senate not to jeopardize a resource that is so important to our society.
