A new House bill would give federal courts the power to order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPN services to block designated foreign piracy sites, reviving a long-running debate over whether copyright enforcement belongs inside internet infrastructure.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced H.R. 10364, the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026, on September 14, requiring any ISP, DNS provider, or VPN service with at least 100,000 US users to block court-designated foreign piracy sites.
How the Bill Works
The bill creates a two-step judicial process that first labels a site as a foreign piracy threat, then compels network operators to cut off US access.
Copyright holders would petition a court for a declaration that a site qualifies as a “foreign piracy site,” using a preponderance-of-evidence standard. Once a site is designated, rightsholders can seek a separate blocking order requiring covered network operators to take “reasonable steps” to prevent US users from reaching it.
Providers get a 14-day window to object before a blocking order takes effect, though judges can compress that timeline for time-sensitive situations such as live sports broadcasts or newly released content being pirated within hours of release. Root nameserver operators, top-level domain registries, and local Wi-Fi networks at airports, libraries, and restaurants are explicitly exempt.
Who’s Pushing It and Why
Issa and the entertainment industry frame the bill as a necessary upgrade to copyright tools that were built for a slower internet.
Issa argues the existing DMCA notice-and-takedown process moves too slowly for modern piracy, particularly real-time copying of live sports. At a June 30 hearing, he asked whether copyright enforcement could happen “at the speed of sound” or “at the speed of light” to make piracy unprofitable within short broadcast windows.
The Motion Picture Association has been lobbying for exactly this kind of regime. MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said in April 2024 that the group would “work with members of Congress” to require ISP-level blocking, noting that more than fifty countries already use site-blocking to combat digital piracy.
Issa’s bill follows earlier bipartisan proposals, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act from January 2025. A separate Senate bill introduced in July 2025 by Chris Coons and Thom Tillis described site-blocking as a “smart, targeted tool” to stop criminal piracy operations.
“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.” Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel, Public Knowledge
Critics Say Europe Already Tried This
European blocking regimes have repeatedly swept up hundreds of legitimate sites, offering a cautionary data set for US lawmakers.
Research cited by the Re:Create coalition, drawn from a University of Twente study on Italy’s Piracy Shield, found that 510 legitimate websites were inadvertently blocked, including a Catholic convent and a telehealth platform, with wrongly blocked sites staying down an average of 320 days. According to Re:Create, Spain’s blocking regime during LaLiga football matches blocked 5.8% of the popular internet, catching sites including Harvard University and Greenpeace.
A coalition letter to Congress signed by Public Knowledge, EFF, CCIA, Fight for the Future, i2Coalition, Re:Create, and R Street Institute calls overblocking a systemic, unsolved problem. Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler was more direct: “The American Copyright Protection Act of 2026 is anything but American.”
The DNS and Privacy Problem
Routing blocking orders through global DNS resolvers raises the prospect of a single US court imposing worldwide access restrictions.
Applying blocking orders to global DNS resolvers creates a specific technical risk: a single US court could effectively cut off access to a website everywhere, not just in the United States. For VPN providers, compliance conflicts directly with core privacy commitments, and Re:Create warns that technical spillover onto shared infrastructure could disrupt legitimate traffic at scale. surveillance app
Cloudflare’s dispute with Italian regulators offers a concrete preview of that friction. Cloudflare refused to implement Piracy Shield blocks on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, calling Piracy Shield a “misguided Italian regulatory scheme.”
Small Businesses Carry the Risk
Wrongly blocked sites face weeks without recourse, and critics argue the bill’s compensation ceiling does little to offset real-world losses.
Operators of wrongly blocked sites may have no effective remedy for days or weeks. The draft bill reportedly contemplates up to $250,000 in compensation for erroneously blocked third parties, but critics argue that cap is inadequate for sustained economic harm.
Small businesses and nonprofits face the greatest exposure and have the fewest resources to mount a legal response. Public Knowledge points to European cases where blocking brought down digital infrastructure for hotels, car mechanics, retail shops, and telehealth programs as evidence of how collateral damage plays out in practice.
As of mid-September 2026, the full text of H.R. 10364 had not yet been published on Congress.gov, and the bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Issa chairs the subcommittee on courts, intellectual property, AI, and the internet, and is reportedly retiring at the end of his current term. If the bill advances, ISPs, DNS providers, and VPN operators will face significant decisions about how to implement court orders without causing collateral harm to the users and services they serve.
