Academic

DAVID POST: ?Congress is set to once again consider the Sen Leahy?s Combating Online Infringement?

By Glenn Reynolds

DAVID POST: “Congress is set to once again consider the Sen Leahy?s Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeit Act, a truly awful bill . . . The bill would allow the Attorney General to institute an in rem action against the domain name of any Internet site ?dedicated to infringing activities? ? defined to include any site that ?engages in? copyright or trademark-infringing activities where those activities, ?taken together,? are ?central to the activity? of the site. The court would then be authorized to issue injunctions ? not against the offending website, but against ?the domain name? itself ? ordering the domain name registrar where the target site?s domain name was registered, and the domain name registry responsible for maintaining the authoritative database of names for the target site?s top-level domain, to ?lock out? the domain name (and therefore prevent access to the site through use of the domain name).”

If I have to choose between getting rid of copyright and getting rid of free speech, I’ll say goodbye to copyright. The folks at Big Content, and their shills like Leahy, seem to want to make me choose.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 15, 2010 (boomark / email).