America can order any site in the world to take down content

The US government has decided that it has the right to take down content on any website in the world if a movie or recording studio complains about it.

The worldwide censorship programme will let the Justice Department seek US court orders against piracy websites anywhere in the world and shut them down through domain registration.

According to Wired the law has the backing of both republicans and democrats and is quite possibly the first time that the US has attempted to impose its quaint medieval legal system on the rest of the world. It is certainly the first time that the US has ordered other nation states to obey the will of its own private companies.

Basically the only reason that the world has to listen is that the US has control of the domain registration system.

The law is called "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," and as Wired points out it is the Holy Grail of intellectual-property enforcement.

Wow

Go Team America!

And this is why we need international, not USA, oversight of such things.

Unfortunately, we'd also need a new favourite search engine since Google comes under US jurisdiction... unless Google want to move to Europe, which would be cool