New Federal Legislation Seeks Court Authority to Block Offshore Sites Across Virtual Networks

Lawmakers in Washington are once again weighing statutory authority that would permit federal courts to cut off domestic access to international websites accused of copyright infringement. Representative Darrell Issa of California has formally introduced the proposal, known as the American Copyright Protection Act and designated as H.R. 10364.

Under the statutory framework, intellectual property owners would petition a federal court to declare an offshore platform a foreign piracy site. Once that declaration is granted, the rights holder could seek binding orders commanding network intermediaries to adopt commercially reasonable steps to stop people within the United States from reaching those addresses.

The reach of the measure extends past typical internet service providers and domain name registries. While previous efforts, such as the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act, excluded standalone virtual private network companies and encrypted domain resolution services, H.R. 10364 explicitly sweeps VPN providers into the circle of entities subject to blocking mandates.

The draft also broadens the category of services vulnerable to enforcement. Prior legislative proposals applied exclusively to operations with no commercially significant purpose beyond infringement. The new language lowers that bar, targeting hubs that possess only limited commercially significant activity aside from unauthorized sharing, which places hybrid websites with lawful commerce in jeopardy.

Substantial concerns focus on procedural fairness during the initial court proceedings. A foreign platform can be classified as an infringing venue without its operators ever presenting an argument in court. Judges would possess the option to appoint an independent special master to inspect the evidence, but that step remains discretionary, and such an appointee does not serve as an advocate for the accused platform or its readers.

Supporters included several mechanisms designed to mitigate errors. Intermediaries receiving blocking demands must be given formal notice and an avenue to contest them, and courts must evaluate potential disruption to unrelated services. Copyright holders would also have to post financial bonds to cover potential damages resulting from improper injunctions, while mistakenly targeted operations can apply for compensation or seek to overturn their designation.

Opponents argue that structural checks have proven insufficient in other countries attempting similar interventions. In Italy, an enforcement mechanism called Piracy Shield erroneously disrupted access to more than five hundred unrelated platforms, including a telehealth service and a convent. In Spain, an initiative intended to halt unlicensed sports broadcasts caused outages for over 550,000 domains, cutting off websites tied to Greenpeace and Harvard University.

The proposal reopens a policy fight that reached national prominence more than a decade ago during debates over the Stop Online Piracy Act. By drawing privacy utilities like VPNs directly into copyright enforcement duties, the new bill tests whether Congress is prepared to order structural filtering across the domestic internet.