Engineers Blindsided By COICA Bill Under Review by Senate

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/29/engineers-slam-internet-censorship-ahead-key-vote/

by agraddy • 16 years ago

3 1 16 years ago

agraddy• 16 years ago

I realize that a lot of people have issues with FoxNews but it was the best article I came across that fully explained the issues and potential ramifications of the COICA bill. The full text of the bill can be found here: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804

This bill has the potential to greatly affect both US and non-US startups. From what I can tell, if a judge rules that a non-US site's purpose is to violate copyright then the judge's ruling would require US businesses to stop working with the site - ISPs block, financial and ad companies break business ties. A non-US site could see all US traffic blocked and it's PayPal and Adsense accounts revoked.

As I mentioned in another thread, this bill would set a dangerous precedent for the US government to be able to block a website with a simple ruling by a judge. I could see cases where large entertainment companies would bring lawsuits against small web startups in places where the courts would favorably lean in their direction (think patent cases in East Texas).

Engineers Blindsided By COICA Bill Under Review by Senate

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