

Engineers Blindsided By COICA Bill Under Review by Senate - agraddy
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/29/engineers-slam-internet-censorship-ahead-key-vote/

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agraddy
I realize that a lot of people have issues with FoxNews but it was the best
article I came across that fully explained the issues and potential
ramifications of the COICA bill. The full text of the bill can be found here:
<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-3804>

This bill has the potential to greatly affect both US and non-US startups.
From what I can tell, if a judge rules that a non-US site's purpose is to
violate copyright then the judge's ruling would require US businesses to stop
working with the site - ISPs block, financial and ad companies break business
ties. A non-US site could see all US traffic blocked and it's PayPal and
Adsense accounts revoked.

As I mentioned in another thread, this bill would set a dangerous precedent
for the US government to be able to block a website with a simple ruling by a
judge. I could see cases where large entertainment companies would bring
lawsuits against small web startups in places where the courts would favorably
lean in their direction (think patent cases in East Texas).

