You link isn't working for me - but I will take your word. That is an interesting point and seems simple enough for most people to understand, I wonder why it wasn't brought up.
Do you know any details about the "wholesale piracy" portion of the claim? Is it just a matter of setting a dangerous precedent (who defines "wholesale", etc) or is there a more concrete counterpoint in the bill?
Ah, it appears that the HN link parser clips the colon off the end of the URL in my previous post. I fixed the formatting, but the link is no longer clickable. Should be copy/pasteable.
About the "wholesale piracy" bit: that's also wrong. The bill would apply to an "an Internet site, or a portion thereof" ... "primarily designed or operated for the purpose of" piracy. (Sec 103.a.1.A-B) Links on bit.ly (for example) that pointed to illegal downloads would fall into that category. The phrase "portion of" is not compatible with Cotton's "wholesale" description.
For me, the worst part is that the bill targets sites "facilitating the commission of criminal violations," (Sec 102.a.2) related to copyright law, rather than actually committing the criminal violations. If this were in the realm of guns rather than copyright, it would make every gun magazine publisher a criminal. In general, speech about crime is different than crime itself, especially when the activity at hand can be criminal or noncriminal in different circumstances.
I agree the "or portion thereof" part is unclear and could be interpreted as enabling courts to DNS-block a domain on which any amount of infringement is going on. For example ISPs will be required to "prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving". What the hell does "domain name of a portion of a site" mean?
Regarding the "facilitating" part, notice it is just one of three items in a definition. ALL of these items have to be satisfied. Let's not spread FUD here.
Do you know any details about the "wholesale piracy" portion of the claim? Is it just a matter of setting a dangerous precedent (who defines "wholesale", etc) or is there a more concrete counterpoint in the bill?