Controversial new piracy bill passes senate

The Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a new bill that will help to crack down on illegal music downloading and other counterfeit products and downloads. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Actwill allow the Justice Department to seek a court order against the domain name of violators and remove them from the internet by disabling their domain name. This would allow the government to circumvent regional controls which allow people in foreign countries to post infringing material as long as the servers are hosted abroad. With these new powers, the Justice Department could shut down a site even if it was hosted in Europe.

Sites like the infamous Pirate Bay were able to act with impunity due to more flexible laws in their native countries, however the new bill would allow the government to shut the domain down. The site itself would still exist, but be largely unreachable by most users. The bill was endorsed by companies like Disney, Time Warner, Nike and Merck but opposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Find more details here.