US Representative Darrell Issa has introduced the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA), a bill meant to create a court process for blocking foreign websites that infringe copyright. TorrentFreak reports that if the bill becomes law, US internet providers and DNS services could be required to enforce those orders.
The final text of H.R. 10364 hasn’t been published yet, so it’s still unclear who exactly would have to carry out the rulings. An earlier 2025 draft put that duty not only on internet providers but also on operators of DNS resolvers, the services that translate domain names into IP addresses. The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the internet’s core building blocks, which means blocking at popular DNS services could significantly limit access to specific sites.
The same draft called for a dedicated pool of judges to hear these cases, with DNS providers expected to work with rights holders when enforcing rulings. Its authors also tried to guard against mistakes. If a site was blocked because of a rights holder’s error, its owner could have claimed up to $250,000 in compensation. Whether that provision will make it into the final version is not yet known.
The sharpest criticism has come from Public Knowledge, a US digital rights group. In its view, ACPA could turn telecom operators and DNS providers into part of the copyright enforcement machinery. The group is most worried about how US court orders might affect global DNS resolvers. Depending on how those orders are carried out, users outside the US could lose access to certain sites as well.
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Advocates also warn of overblocking. They point to European anti-piracy systems that have at times cut off legitimate sites along with pirate ones. In Spain, for example, La Liga’s fight against pirate broadcasts led to more than 500,000 legitimate sites being blocked. Small businesses and nonprofits could be hit hardest by such mistakes.
