Photo Credit: Michael Geiger
Rep. Darrell Issa introduced a bill aimed at creating an expedited process to block foreign piracy sites. But already, it’s getting slammed by critics.
On Monday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) introduced a bill aimed at creating an expedited judicial process for copyright owners to obtain orders to block access to certain foreign piracy sites. Dubbed the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA), the bill is designed to supplement the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the speed of which Issa argues is too inefficient to address today’s digital landscape.
The official text of Issa’s bill has not yet been publicly revealed, but groups who have spoken out in opposition—including Re:Create and Public Knowledge—have reviewed a draft of the bill that was circulated to stakeholders in May 2025.
Reportedly, the bill would allow a copyright owner to petition a designated federal judge to block a piracy site, after which the court would decide whether the target was a qualifying “foreign piracy site.” The court could then order covered service providers to take reasonable steps to prevent U.S. users from accessing it. Such orders could be subsequently updated, renewed, narrowed, or rescinded.
To that end, Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler cautioned that the bill in its current iteration actually promotes censorship and is “anything but American.”
“By codifying a one-sided legal process modeled on European site-blocking laws, which have been shown to cause widespread censorship, this bill violates American due process, First Amendment rights, and American ingenuity,” said Butler.
“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 Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel, Meredith Rose, adding that the approach is misguided and will have far-reaching consequences. “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.”
That means the court can essentially cut off global access to a website, according to Rose, which has led to problems in Europe where similar legislature has already been implemented. Data from Re:Create reveals that “innocent” websites remained blocked for an average of 320 days in Italy, while 5.8% of the “popular internet,” including Harvard University and Greenpeace, was blocked by Spain’s system during crucial sports matches.