New US Bill Would Force ISPs and VPNs to Block Piracy Sites

Key Takeaways

• Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) introduced the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026, which would allow copyright holders to obtain court orders requiring ISPs, DNS providers, and VPN services with over 100,000 US users to block designated foreign piracy websites.
• Courts could issue blocking orders on a preponderance-of-evidence standard, with a default 14-day window for service providers to object — shortened for time-sensitive content like live sports.
• Critics including the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Re:Create coalition argue the bill would create a broad censorship infrastructure, enable overblocking of legitimate sites, and give a single court global reach over DNS resolution.
• Site-blocking systems in Europe have repeatedly caught legitimate websites in their net — in Spain disrupting payment processors and a national healthcare provider, in Italy affecting hundreds of legitimate sites according to University of Twente researchers.
• The Motion Picture Association has been lobbying for US site-blocking legislation since at least 2024; similar bills have been proposed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

What the Bill Would Do

The American Copyright Protection Act of 2026, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa this week and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, would create a judicial mechanism for blocking foreign piracy websites at the network infrastructure level. 

Under the proposed system, a copyright holder could petition a court to declare an online location a "foreign piracy site" based on a preponderance of the evidence that it is primarily designed for piracy. Once a court makes that declaration, the copyright holder could then seek a separate court order requiring network operators to block access to it.

The blocking obligation would fall on ISPs, domain name resolution services, and VPN services with at least 100,000 monthly US users or subscribers. Root nameserver operators, top-level domain registries, and Wi-Fi networks offered at airports, libraries, restaurants, and retail stores would be excluded. 

Service providers would generally have 14 days to file objections, but judges could shorten that window for time-sensitive situations — the bill specifically contemplates faster blocking for websites airing pirated live sports or content released within 24 hours.

Issa, who is retiring from the House at the end of this year, framed the bill as a response to the speed problem in existing copyright enforcement. The Motion Picture Association, which has been lobbying for site-blocking legislation since at least 2024, submitted a letter for a June 2026 hearing noting that more than fifty countries have already imposed site-blocking and arguing that the US creative economy loses billions annually as a result of not having one.

A Censorship Infrastructure by Another Name

The opposition to the bill is specific about what it objects to, and it’s not copyright protection in principle. Public Knowledge described the bill as building "a sweeping infrastructure for censorship" rather than addressing piracy at its source by pursuing the people running overseas piracy operations through existing legal channels. 

The Re:Create coalition called it a one-sided legal process modeled on European site-blocking laws, which it said have produced widespread censorship as a documented side effect.

The DNS dimension is the sharpest concern. Applying blocking orders to DNS resolvers means that a single court — acting on a single filing, through an expedited procedure — can cut off access to a website globally, since DNS resolution is a foundational layer of how the internet functions. 

Public Knowledge's senior policy counsel noted that blocking orders applied at that level are "incredibly powerful weapons, ripe for abuse," and that other countries' experience shows the messy consequences of implementing them.

VPN services present a different problem. Compelling a VPN to block specific websites is technically difficult even with a court order, since a VPN's function is to route traffic through an encrypted tunnel rather than to filter it. Including VPNs in the blocking mandate appears designed to prevent users from routing around ISP-level blocks — which would make the bill's practical effect not just blocking at the ISP and DNS layer, but attempting to close the workaround at the same time.

What Europe's Experience Actually Shows

The bill's critics have a concrete record to point to, and it’s not favorable to the site-blocking model. In Spain, overblocking under the country's system has caused outages affecting payment processors and a national healthcare provider, and generated grassroots opposition movements.

A September 2025 report by researchers at the University of Twente examining Italy's Piracy Shield system found that at least hundreds of legitimate websites were unknowingly affected by blocking. Cloudflare has been fighting a fine issued by Italy after it refused to block access through its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, calling Piracy Shield a system designed to protect large rightsholder interests at the expense of the broader internet.

Public Knowledge noted that in Europe, overblocking has disrupted digital infrastructure for hotels, car mechanics, retail shops, telehealth programs, and — in a detail that captures the problem precisely — a nunnery. Small businesses and nonprofits face the greatest exposure from erroneous blocking orders and have the fewest legal resources to challenge them, while having no remedy for the days or weeks of lost business that result from an overzealous order. 

A coalition of organizations including the EFF, Fight for the Future, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, and the R Street Institute wrote to Issa directly to say that the idea that site blocking is a solved problem, politically or technologically, is a myth.

The bill has bipartisan precursors — a similar bill was proposed in January 2025 by a Democratic representative, and another in July 2025 by two Democratic and two Republican senators — which suggests the MPA's lobbying has made meaningful progress on both sides of the aisle. Whether the American Copyright Protection Act advances beyond committee referral before Issa's retirement at year's end is unclear, but the legislative direction it represents isn't going away.