A bill circulating among US lawmakers would force broadband companies, domain name resolvers and virtual private network services to cut off access to foreign piracy sites at the request of copyright owners. Consequence reports that Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, is behind the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026, and that the full text has not yet appeared on the congressional bill tracker even as it circulates.
The mechanism matters more than the title. A copyright owner, a record label or a music publisher among them, could ask a court to declare that a site is being used for foreign piracy on a preponderance of the evidence, which is the civil standard rather than the criminal one. Once a court makes that declaration, the holder can petition for an order compelling network operators to block the site.
The obligation would fall on any ISP, DNS provider or VPN service with at least 100,000 monthly subscribers in the United States. Those firms would get 14 days to file objections in most cases. A separate provision allows faster blocking for what the draft calls time-sensitive events, which covers livestreams and anything pirated inside 24 hours of release, the window that matters most for a new album or a pay-per-view show.
The Motion Picture Association and allied rights holder groups have pushed for legislation of this shape for years. Opponents read it as a censorship machine with a copyright label on it. Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge, said Congress and its entertainment industry allies had "decided to build out a sweeping infrastructure for censorship" instead of pursuing the operators of overseas sites in court.
Brandon Butler, executive director of the coalition Re:Create, made the technical version of the same objection, warning that forcing infrastructure providers, DNS resolvers and VPNs to filter traffic "threatens user privacy and risks catastrophic collateral damage to the open web". Site blocking is blunt by design, and a shared host can carry a piracy operation and a small label's storefront on the same address.
The bill also arrives directly on top of a decision that went the other way. Sony's music and publishing arm sued the internet provider Cox Communications over subscribers who kept downloading, winning a judgment of roughly $1 billion before it was overturned on appeal. In March the Supreme Court held that internet providers cannot be held liable for their users' piracy, which removed the damages route and left blocking as the remaining lever. Labels have been testing the limits of enforcement in other directions too, from a piracy case against an internet provider that the majors offered to drop to SOCAN's suit against the AI music platform Suno.
The American Copyright Protection Act has gone to the House Judiciary Committee, and no floor vote has been scheduled. Physical counterfeiting is still being handled the old way in the meantime: in Britain this week, the operator of the country's largest fake vinyl plant was sent to prison after a police raid rather than a court order to an ISP.
The facts
- Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026.
- It would let courts order network operators to cut access to foreign piracy sites.
- A copyright owner would have to prove the case on a preponderance of the evidence.
- It covers ISPs, DNS providers and VPN services with 100,000 US subscribers or more.
- Those firms would get 14 days to object in most cases.
- A fast track covers livestreams and material pirated within 24 hours of release.
- The bill has gone to the House Judiciary Committee with no vote scheduled.
- In March the Supreme Court held internet providers are not liable for users' piracy.
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