20 November, 2010

Senate Committee OKs Domain-Name Seizure for Pirate Websites

As reported on wired.com:

"The United States inched a procedural step closer Thursday to becoming the world’s internet piracy policeman.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, voting 19-0, approved legislation that would let the Justice Department seek U.S. court orders against piracy websites anywhere in the world, and shut them down through the sites’ domain registration. 

The bill would direct injunctions at a piracy site’s domain registrar if the registration was through a U.S. company. If not, the Justice Department could serve the court order at the registry for the site’s top-level domain. Registrys for the dot-com, dot-net and dot-org domains are all based in the United States, and thus within the courts’ jurisdiction.

For domains not under U.S. control, the bill would demand that internet service providers in the United States block resolution of the address upon a court order, but overseas users would not be impacted."

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