A new bill to be submitted to the House of Representatives of the United States may resume some disturbing points of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which caused widespread protests last year.
The new proposal, entitled Intellectual Property Attaché Act (IPAA), was designed primarily to expand the powers of the so-called intellectual property attachés by creating a new agency within the Department of Commerce, as well as a the post of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property.
According to the bill, the main task of these new attachés is to “achieve a potential benefit in reducing intellectual property infringement in the U.S. and worldwide market.” For the ReadWriteWeb, a good proposal’s interpretation is that it will provide members of the diplomatic corps with more powers to enforce violations of intellectual property worldwide.
Regarding the Internet, there are some points that have already been explored in the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and in the PIPA (Protect IP Act)
With this proposal, officers for intellectual property protection may challenge anyone who provides revenues to sites considered suspicious. The bill also determines that the U.S. Attorney General sends court orders to DNS servers, so that they may cut services to internet protocols and domains accused of violation. And search engines may also be required to block links to infringing sites.
The IPAA is authored by U.S. Congressman Lamar Smith, who also launched the SOPA. This time, however, he will be supported by members of the House of Representatives, who had first rejected the SOPA.
Apparently, there is a certain rush to implement the IPAA, probably with the goal to prevent waves of protests, like those occurred against the SOUP and PIPA.