Break the Pirates: Congress Should Allow Courts to Block Foreign Pirate Websites
The United States is a dominant global leader in the creative and entertainment industries. The sector contributes nearly $1.2 trillion to gross domestic product (GDP)—4.2 percent of the total U.S. economy—and U.S. creative services exports totaled $294 billion in 2024, the latest year for which data is available. The industry also supports 5.4 million American jobs. Yet, despite this sector's importance to the U.S. economy, creators lack the tools to protect their work from foreign online piracy. There is bipartisan consensus that courts should be able to block foreign pirate websites—and Congress should act before piracy inflicts further economic harm.
The damage from online piracy to the U.S. economy is well established. A 2019 U.S. Chamber of Commerce report estimated annual losses from digital piracy at between $29 billion and $71 billion for movies and TV shows. The Chamber’s estimate is now seven years old and may underestimate current damage. The COVID-19 pandemic changed entertainment consumption patterns—a survey found that 6–8 percent of respondents began using illegal pirate channels during the pandemic. Later, a 2025 study suggested that theater revenues during the first eight weeks of a new film decrease by roughly 8 percent if consumers can access a pirated alternative.
More recently, in June 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of nearly 400 sites that were streaming matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup Finals. U.S. authorities can seize some piracy-related domain names when U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the relevant domain infrastructure, but they lack the authority to block foreign piracy sites. In this respect, the United States is an anomaly, as at least 50 countries allow blocking foreign pirate websites.
But recent congressional initiatives aim to align the United States with international good practices. In September 2026, Representative Issa (R-CA) introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA), which “will allow copyright owners to seek a federal court determination that a foreign website is engaged in copyright piracy.” The same week, Representative Lofgren (D-CA) and Representative Cline (R-VA) introduced the Deterring Extraterritorial Foreign Exploitation of Networks Damaging Intellectual Property (DEFEND IP) Act of 2026, a bicameral legislation supported by Senators Blackburn (R-TN), Coons (D-DE), Schiff (D-CA), and Tillis (R-NC). The DEFEND IP Act also seeks judicial authorization to block foreign pirate sites.
Although both bills differ in technicalities—particularly in how they treat virtual private networks (VPNs) and Domain Name System (DNS) providers—they represent a significant step forward in protecting American rightsholders and making the Internet safer.
It is important to distinguish between mass pirate site operators and incidental copyright infringement. The former—the focus of these bills—are illegal businesses whose core economic activity is extracting value from pirated content (for example, by selling ads or subscriptions below the legitimate price). The latter involves cases in which some unlicensed content appears online inadvertently and is peripheral to the website's core nature. For example, if a website about historical sites accidentally includes an unlicensed image of a famous landmark, it is hardly reasonable to treat it as a pirate site. The DEFEND IP Act, for example, covers this, as it defines pirate sites as those “primarily designed or primarily provided for the purpose” of generating revenue from illegal activities.
The core argument against blocking pirate sites rests on a fear of “overblocking,” or removing non-pirate sites from the Internet. This narrative has not evolved—but evidence against it has grown even stronger. This old argument dominated the early 2010s—the last time there was a push to combat illegal pirate sites through two initiatives: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. Opponents at the time suggested that SOPA/PIPA would “break the Internet.” That was largely disproven, and international evidence suggests that blocking foreign pirate sites effectively shifts consumers to paid, safer legal services.
Notably, both Representatives Issa and Lofgren were prominent opponents of SOPA. Their sponsorship of narrower site-blocking proposals today illustrates how substantially the policy landscape has changed since 2012.
Some critics of the current legislative initiatives are trying to revive this debate, arguing that they represent an “attack on the Internet.” These arguments share three features: 1) arguing that the authority mandates the way Internet service providers (ISPs) can block pirate websites (both ACPA and DEFEND IP expressly suggest that a judicial order may not prescribe specific technical measures); 2) citing the mismanaged cases of Italy and Spain—where blocking was poorly designed and implemented, either without prior judicial authorization or through court-mandated technical measures—as examples, while omitting that the proposed governance for the United States would be entirely different; and 3) omitting the successful cases, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.
The international experience shows that website blocking is neither inherently dangerous nor automatically effective. Effective website blocking depends on sound governance: court authorization, narrow targeting of large-scale foreign piracy sites, technical flexibility for service providers, liability protection and cost recovery, transparent notice, and rapid procedures to address evasive mirror sites.
Two things can be true at once: Website blocking is an effective tool against digital piracy, and, when well designed and implemented, it can target only illegal copyright-infringing sites.
