Stop the Internet Blacklist

First the President wants to be able to wiretap any digital communication (encrypted or not) and now Congress wants us to censor without due process. When did freedom start being such a bad thing?

Relevant sections:<p><i>DOMESTIC DOMAINS- ... Upon receipt of such order, the domain name registrar or domain name registry shall suspend operation of, and lock, the domain name.</i><p><i>NONDOMESTIC DOMAINS- ... a service provider ... shall take reasonable steps that will prevent a domain name from resolving to that domain name’s Internet protocol address<p>a financial transaction provider ... shall take reasonable measures, as expeditiously as practical, to prevent ... its service from processing transactions for customers located within the United States based on purchases associated with the domain name its trademarks from being authorized for use on Internet sites associated with such domain name<p>a service that serves contextual or display advertisements to Internet sites shall take reasonable measures... to prevent its network from serving advertisements to an Internet site accessed through such domain name.</i><p>Source: <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804" rel="nofollow">http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804</a>

Full text of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act at the link.<p><a href="http://news.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3804/text?version=is" rel="nofollow">http://news.opencongress.org/bill/111-s3804/text?version=is</a>

But unlike an IP address based blacklist, this should be relatively easy to bypass, right? A BitTorrent like infrastructure, run purely by people for the people. Or a HTTP based DNS resolution, as long as it can be bootstrapped.

I'd like to know more about the details of the bill, but as presented in this article I think it's a very bad idea indeed.

Someday, the same bureaucrat at the FCC who enforces net-neutrality could also be checking ISP compliance with the blacklist!

If you have faith in our copyright system, it's probably not worth worrying about.<p>Fulltext of the bill: <a href="http://bit.ly/aGMT4L" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/aGMT4L</a>