COICA gets out of committee

The Senate Judiciary Committee has passed the Combating Online Infringement and Copyright Act. The bill would allow the US Attorney General to go after “Internet sites dedicated to infringing activities” in the US and elsewhere. If a judge finds a site to have most of its activity focused on pirating material, the site will be blocked by US-based domain name system services. People trying to buy these pirated materials from US addresses won’t be able to get their credit cards processed, and the site won’t be able to advertise through Google Adwords. The music and movie industry is all for this legislation. Others criticize that it starts the US in a direction of censorship. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Wikipedia, and eBay are all against it.

The bill now moves to the full Senate for a vote.