New Bill Would Require U.S. ISPs to Block Pirate Sites

This article is confusing. At first it reads as if the DOJ gets to do the blocking without judicial oversight: "authorizes the Department of Justice to choke off access to foreign sites, including ordering domestic ISPs..."

Then it sounds like there is judicial oversight, in that the bill "would authorize the Department of Justice to file an in rem civil action against a domain name, and seek a preliminary order from the court that the domain name is being used to traffic infringing material."

Then it sounds like the Attorney General can bypass judicial oversight: "According to the bill, the U.S. Attorney General would require the DOJ's intellectual property enforcement coordinator to post a list of the infringing sites. The AG may also expand the order to additional domains."

I don't support piracy, but this bill definitely makes me uncomfortable. Besides being censorship of free speech, it bothers me when the U.S. government expends so much effort and financial resources to protect corporate assets.

Don't get me wrong -- doing so may be a government responsibility, but it ranks much lower than things like infrastructure, education, and economic development in my book.

Meanwhile, important already existing programs under DOJ purview like the FBI's DNA forensics department are underfunded and backlogged by at least a year for often time-sensitive cases like missing-persons investigations. Do we live in a democracy or an oligarchy?

See: http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a1039.pdf