The Senate Judiciary Committee this morning unanimously approved the PROTECT IP Act by a voice vote after a brief markup; the hugely controversial Internet blacklisting bill now moves to the Senate floor with minimal changes, and may—or may not—soon come to a vote.

The bill builds on last year's proposed COICA legislation, which would have given the government power to go to court and get a website's domain name blocked from American DNS servers. Credit card companies and advertising networks would be forbidden to do business with such sites. The bill was also passed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) put a hold on the bill when it came to the floor.

The new version tightens up its definition of infringing sites, but adds things like a “private right of action” for companies who want to cripple sites without waiting for the government to get involved. Search engines are also prohibited from linking to blocked sites.

Major rightsholders are particularly thrilled. The MPAA and the cable lobby both expressed enthusiastic support, and the US Chamber of Commerce said in a statement, "Rogue sites and their operators contribute nothing to the US economy. They do not innovate, they do not pay taxes, they do not follow safety standards, and they do not follow the law. Today’s vote serves as a wakeup call to those who illicitly profit at the expense of American businesses and consumers—the US will not tolerate your careless, reckless, malicious behavior."

Will the bill get a vote in the Senate this time? Wyden has been cautious in his public statements, previously suggesting that certain changes to the bill could make it more palatable to him. He did make clear, however, that the bill in "its current form" was not acceptable.

As he told Ars when we spoke a month ago, "If the new version of COICA is like last year's version of COICA, I will do everything in my power to block it."

Back on May 12, when the PROTECT IP Act was introduced, Wyden said it would be "hard to consider legislation that would give the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security additional authorities to combat online content infringement While the departments finally responded to questions that I sent them more than three months ago, their responses reveal a single-minded determination to stamp out online infringement and demonstrate little if any understanding of the Internet’s value and function."

Of particular concern is "their refusal to explain how linking is different than free speech. Given that hyperlinks in many ways form the foundation of the Internet, efforts to go after one site for linking to another site—which the Administration is currently doing and the Protect IP Act would expand on—threaten to do much more than protect IP."

Update: Sen. Wyden has placed a hold on the bill.

Listing image by Capitol photo by vgm8383