Plans are evolving in Washington that could finally make the music industry’s anti-piracy tactic of choice - web-blocking - available in the US. Republican Representative Darrell Issa has formally introduced the American Copyright Protection Act in Congress, which would allow copyright owners to get web-blocking orders in US courts targeting foreign piracy sites.
Issa’s proposals are explicit that those court orders could force DNS resolvers and VPNs as well as internet service providers to block their customers from accessing piracy websites.
In many European countries web-blocks against ISPs have been available for years, but record companies and sports broadcasters have been increasingly seeking court orders that force other kinds of internet companies to implement web-blocks too.
Issa’s proposed act says that American courts could issue web-blocking orders against “broadband internet access services, providers of domain name resolution services and virtual private networks”. According to Torrentfreak, an earlier draft of Issa’s proposals did not include VPNs. Presumably they have been added following lobbying efforts by certain copyright owners.
Talking of lobbying efforts, those who oppose web-blocks are already criticising Issa’s proposals, with the Re:Create Coalition accusing the Congress member of pushing a “one-sided legal process modelled on European site-blocking laws which have been shown to cause widespread censorship”, and which would “violate American due process, First Amendment rights and American ingenuity”.
The organisation’s Executive Director Brandon Butler adds that the proposed web-blocks “threaten user privacy and risks catastrophic collateral damage to the open web”. And “this fast-track site-blocking scheme bypasses effective legal channels, undermines the digital ecosystem and invites copyright abuse - disrupting small businesses, nonprofit and internet users across the globe”.
Although the music industry talks a lot less about piracy these days, music companies have been prolific users of web-blocking in those countries where it is available as an anti-piracy tactic. Web-blocks are also supported by other copyright owning businesses, and especially movie studios and sports broadcasters.
Attempts to formally add web-blocks into US copyright law fifteen years ago famously resulted in a massive backlash from the tech sector, with Wikipedia blacking out its English language service for 24 hours in protest. The US web-blocking proposals were quickly dropped and for many years were never mentioned again, even as courts in other countries started regularly issuing web-blocking injunctions.
However, in more recent years the copyright industries, and especially the movie industry, have been lobbying again for an American web-block law and have found some support in Washington.
Issa’s American Copyright Protection Act is not the only web-blocking proposal currently working its way through Congress, with Democrat representative Zoe Lofgren introducing the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act last year and various senators backing similar proposals contained in the draft Block BEARD Act.
In most other countries, while there may have been a little controversy when ISP-centric web-blocking was first proposed, once the courts started issuing web-block orders, most ISPs just quietly implemented them without much drama. However, more recent attempts in Europe to force VPNs and DNS resolvers to also block piracy sites have proven more controversial.
Cisco, which operates the OpenDNS domain name resolution service, has been particularly critical of the idea that web-blocks should apply to DNS resolvers, and has just shut down OpenDNS in countries where such web-blocks have been instigated, including France, Portugal and Belgium.
An assortment of arguments have been presented against web-blocks over the years, including that they don’t really work because web-savvy users can easily circumvent the blocks once they are in place. Copyright owners argue that any hurdles you can put in front of piracy services are a good thing and, if VPNs and DNS resolvers also instigate the blocks, they become harder to get around.
But critics argue that forcing VPNs and especially DNS resolvers to instigate web-blocking is more problematic, and can negatively impact on the stability and security of the wider internet.
Re:Create - which includes various tech sector groups among its membership - has put together a one-pager setting out its objections to the American Copyright Protection Act.
It highlights issues that have been created by web-blocking in Europe - including Cisco withdrawing OpenDNS from some markets - while also insisting that “forcing network providers to automatically block DNS queries introduces severe risks to internet stability and reliability”.
All of which means, while web-blocking proposals are now gaining some momentum in Washington, we can expect plenty more push back from the tech sector. Maybe not quite on the level of the 2012 Wikipedia black out, but still sufficient to slow that momentum down.