Senate bill amounts to death penalty for Web sites

The U.S. Department of Justice would receive the power to seek a court order against an allegedly infringing Web site, and then serve that order on search engines, certain Domain Name System providers, and Internet advertising firms--which would in turn be required to "expeditiously" make the target Web site invisible.

Any copyright holder also could file a lawsuit and seek to levy a less dramatic form of Internet punishment, blocking only "financial transactions" and "Internet advertising services" from doing business with the suspected infringer.