Bad news for folks who frequent illegal file sharing and torrent sites to for their entertainment purposes. A recently proposed bill named the Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property), the law will remove websites that dish out pirated content from the internet’s address books, making them hard to find by their domain name. The law would also force search engines to stop listing these infringing sites in their indexes.
The Protect IP Act would also allow copyright holders to apply for court orders to get sites blocked or de-listed. In addition to shutting down easy access to those websites, payment firms and ad networks could also be told to stop servicing such sites. Wow, it looks like the US government is really interested in quashing piracy in the country. However, this amount of censorship is not going to sit well with a lot of folks that who don’t believe that the government should be deciding what they can or can’t view online.
But no matter what the government does, people are going to find another way to access pirated content. People are always looking forward to get their hands on the “forbidden fruit”. With recent reports suggesting that alternative services for movies like Netflix leading to the reduction of torrent downloads, maybe that’s the right step to take instead of blocking people from accessing it – give them an alternative.
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