Representatives for the movie and book industries expressed some optimism that web-blocking could be introduced in the United States during an Anti-Piracy Symposium held by the US Patent And Trademark Office last week.
Web-blocking - a preferred anti-piracy tactic of many copyright industries, and especially the music industry - is available to copyright owners in numerous other countries, including the UK, but not currently the US. Although there was optimism at last week's event that that could now change, no actual timeline for making any change was suggested.
According to Torrentfreak, Marissa Bostick from the Motion Picture Association told the symposium that, with support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, US copyright law could be amended to allow copyright owners to secure web-blocking orders through the courts.
Lui Simpson from book publishing trade body the Association Of American Publishers added, “We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll make progress”.
Web-blocking orders force internet service providers and other internet companies to block access to copyright infringing websites. They are regularly secured outside the US by music and movie companies, and other copyright owners, who are seeking to block access to file-sharing and stream-ripping platforms, as well as cyber-lockers with slack copyright enforcement policies, and unlicensed download and streaming services.
There was famously an attempt to amend US law to introduce web-blocking in 2012, but there was a massive backlash from the tech sector resulting in the proposals being abandoned. The copyright industries argued that much of that backlash was based around unwarranted fear-mongering, to the effect that legitimate websites that inadvertently host some copyright infringing material would also get blocked.
The fact that hasn’t generally happened in other countries where web-blocking is now standard should help counter that narrative if there is another attempt to bring web-blocking into US copyright law. “The hope now is that the misinformation will not be so much of a hindrance here to actually getting a remedy in place”, said publishers’ rep Simpson at last week's event.
That said, it was pointed out that some web-blocking initiatives in other countries have been criticised for inadvertently blocking legit platforms, in particular Italy’s Piracy Shield programme, which the US Computer & Communications Industry Association recently complained about to the European Union.
Which presumably means any new campaign by the copyright industries to get web-blocking into US law would have to be ready to respond to criticism related to things like the Piracy Shield, and explain how the issues raised with Italy's anti-piracy measures wouldn’t occur under any new US system.