Bill Would Give Justice Dept. Power to Shutter Piracy Sites Worldwide

Lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would let the Justice Department seek US court orders against piracy websites anywhere in the world, and shut them down through the sites' domain registration. The bipartisan legislation, dubbed the Combating Online Infringement & Counterfeits Act, amounts to the Holy Grail of intellectual-property enforcement. If passed, the Justice Department could ask a federal court for an injunction that would order a US domain registrar or registry to stop resolving an infringing site's domain name, so that visitors to PirateBay.org, for example, would get an error message.