US Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has proposed a law that would require Internet service providers and other network operators to block foreign piracy websites. Issa’s bill would help copyright holders obtain judicial blocking orders to be served to ISPs, domain name resolution services, and virtual private networks.
Issa, who is retiring from the House at the end of this year, is the latest in a string of Republican and Democratic lawmakers to propose a site-blocking regime that’s been sought by the Motion Picture Association (MPA). He submitted the bill this week, after indicating in a June 30 hearing that he planned to introduce site-blocking legislation.
“While millions of listings for copyright-infringing content are removed every day under [the] notice-and-takedown process set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, right-holders have raised concerns with the speed,” Issa said at the hearing. Issa asked, “Can we do it at the speed of sound? Can we do it at the speed of light? More importantly, in a 45-minute or sometimes a fraction of that live sports broadcast, can we do it soon enough to make it no longer profitable for those who pop up and sell their clandestine wares?”
Issa argued that online piracy helps fund terrorist groups and other criminal networks. Advocacy groups opposing his bill say it would impose a broad censorship regime and disrupt small businesses falsely accused of piracy.
“Rather than attacking the problem at its source by bringing the people running overseas piracy websites to court, Congress and its entertainment industry allies have decided to build out a sweeping infrastructure for censorship,” said Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge. “Site-blocking orders force any service provider, from residential broadband providers to global DNS resolvers, to disrupt traffic from targeted websites simply accused of copyright infringement.”
Judicial blocking orders
Issa’s bill was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. Issa is the chair of a subcommittee on courts, intellectual property, artificial intelligence, and the Internet.
The text of Issa’s “American Copyright Protection Act of 2026” is not on the congressional website yet, but it has been circulating, and Public Knowledge provided us with a copy. The bill proposes having courts issue site-blocking orders to ISPs, DNS providers, and VPN services that have at least 100,000 monthly users or subscribers in the US.
The bill specifies that blocking requirements would not apply to root nameserver operators and top-level domain registries. It would also exclude Wi-Fi networks offered on the premises of airports, libraries, restaurants, retail stores, and similar establishments.
Under Issa’s proposed system, a copyright owner could ask a court to issue a declaration that an online location is a “foreign piracy site” based on “a preponderance of the evidence” that it is a foreign site primarily designed for piracy. After a court makes that declaration, the copyright owner could petition for a court order requiring network operators to block the alleged piracy site.
Service providers would generally have 14 days to file objections, but judges would have authority to modify deadlines “to address time-sensitive events.” That provision would allow quicker blocking of websites that air pirated content live or within 24 hours of its release.
The Re:Create coalition said Issa’s bill would codify “a one-sided legal process modeled on European site-blocking laws, which have been shown to cause widespread censorship.”
“Forcing infrastructure providers, DNS resolvers, and VPNs to filter internet traffic threatens user privacy and risks catastrophic collateral damage to the open web,” Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler said. “This fast-track site-blocking scheme bypasses effective legal channels, undermines the digital ecosystem, invites copyright abuse—disrupting small businesses, nonprofit and Internet users across the globe.”
“Powerful weapons, ripe for abuse”
Compelling VPN services to block piracy websites may be difficult even with court orders, but site-blocking orders aimed at broadband and DNS providers would make many websites inaccessible. Rose said applying blocking orders to DNS resolvers “means that one court can cut off access to a website globally, based on a single individual’s filing and an expedited procedure. Blocking orders are incredibly powerful weapons, ripe for abuse, and we’ve seen the messy consequences of them being implemented in other countries.”
The MPA has stepped up its campaign for site-blocking over the last couple of years. In April 2024, MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said the group would “work with members of Congress” to require Internet service providers to block piracy websites.
Although the MPA hasn’t gotten a site-blocking law in the US yet, its push has support in both major parties. In January 2025, US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) proposed a site-blocking law called the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act. Another site-blocking bill, the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act, was proposed in July 2025 by two Democratic senators and two Republican senators.
“Foreign websites pirating American movies, TV shows, art, and books steal tens of billions of dollars from the US economy each year,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said at the time. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called the proposal “a smart, targeted tool to stop these criminal operations at the source without infringing on legitimate speech or due process.”
The MPA submitted a letter for Issa’s June 2026 hearing, saying the US should follow the lead of “more than fifty countries around the world” that have imposed site-blocking. “Unfortunately, the United States still lacks a site-blocking mechanism to combat digital piracy,” the letter said. “As a result, America’s creative economy is being robbed of billions of dollars in lost revenues and hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Overblocking not a “solved problem”
Issa received a letter from other groups that warned site-blocking systems in other countries have disrupted legitimate websites while criminals found ways to evade enforcement.
“In Spain, overblocking has caused outages to payment processors and a national healthcare provider, as well as giving rise to multiple grassroots movements against site-blocking. The idea that site blocking is a ‘solved problem,’ politically or technologically, is a myth,” said the letter from the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, Public Knowledge, and the R Street Institute.
In a September 2025 report on Italy’s Piracy Shield system, researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands said they found that at least “hundreds of legitimate websites [were] unknowingly affected by blocking.” As we’ve previously written, Cloudflare has been fighting a fine issued by Italy over its refusal to block access to websites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service. Cloudflare called Piracy Shield “a misguided Italian regulatory scheme designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader Internet.”
The response Public Knowledge issued to Issa’s bill this week said, “small businesses and nonprofits face the greatest risks for site blocking but have the fewest protections. In Europe, we’ve seen overblocking bring down digital infrastructure for hotels, car mechanics, retail shops, telehealth programs, and even a nunnery.”
Public Knowledge said operators of blocked sites would “have no remedy for the days or weeks (or more) of lost business that result from an overzealous blocking order. America’s small businesses cannot afford to be treated as ‘acceptable collateral damage’ for multibillion-dollar entertainment and sports industries.”
