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Websites offering unauthorized media downloads are often operated from abroad, but two new bills would address Internet piracy not by targeting the over-seas culprits, but instead put pressure on search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, ad servers, and online payment services like PayPal to do away with a framework that the legislation contends allows online piracy to function.
One of the proposed bills is in the House, and the other is in the Senate, and according to the New York Times, there are complaints from several groups (Silicon Valley companies, public-interest groups, free-speech advocates and venture capital investors) that the bills are too broad.
For its part, Google has hired lobbying firms to fight the bills, and Mozilla put a link to a petition warning Firefox users about the bills potential to "censor the Internet." On the other side of the issue, however are similar big hitters, including like the Motion Picture Association of America and the United States Chamber of Commerce are supporting the bills, the Times reports.
The Times writes that according to opponents of the two proposed bills, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (passed in 1998), already requires websites to remove links to pirated material when asked to do so by a copyright holder.
Lines Drawn on Antipiracy Bills [New York Times]
—Maggie Shader
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