New Bill to Effectively Kill Anime & Other Piracy in the U.S. Gets Backing by Netflix, Disney & Sony
https://archive.is/20250203022644/https://www.cbr.com/america-new-piracy-bill-netflix-disney-sony-backing/
>The Motion Pictures Association, comprising Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Sony and more, has backed a new bill bolstering efforts to ban access to anime, live-action, novel, music and other forms of 'piracy' sites in the U.S. and potentially beyond.
>Via Torrent Freak, on Jan. 29, 2025, U.S. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren tabled H.R. 791, the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA). If enacted, copyright holders and exclusive licensees (collectively referred to as petitioners) will be able to petition a U.S. District Court to issue a "preliminary" order to certain U.S. service providers, i.e. Google, Cloudflare and broadband providers -- an initial step to forcing them to block customer access to foreign 'piracy' platforms (websites, apps)."
>This preliminary step is to allow the court to conduct a risk assessment into whether the order will "interfere with user access to non-infringing material on another website or online service, significantly burden the service provider, including the operation of the system or network of the service provider or disserve the public interest," as well as to seek testimony from the accused foreign 'piracy' platform. The foreign operator has 30 days to appear in court for a response. Assuming no opposition comes, the court may appoint a "master" to assist the court in verifying the claims of the rightsholder. The court will otherwise render its judgment within 14 days of receiving opposition from the foreign site.
>If the court is satisfied with the petitioner's claims and its risk assessment, it will issue the blocking order, forcing service providers to deny access to the 'piracy' site within 15 days (20, if the court finds good cause). Notably, the court can also issue a blocking order without waiting for the foreign platform's opposition in the case of an imminent or ongoing live event, such as sports or a concert. If the court has issued a blocking order for a live event, the service provider must comply within 7 days. For non-live events and after the blocking order is granted, the petitioner can move at any point to have it extended for another 12 months if the foreign website has not ceased its infringement.
>The bill defined U.S. service providers as broadband providers with over 100,000 subscribers, and DNS resolution providers with over $100 million in annual revenue that don't exclusively provide DNS services through encrypted means. Therefore, the likely recipients of these orders would include major ISPs like Comcast and AT&T, as well as Cloudflare and Google (which operates Google Public DNS). These two companies have been at the center of numerous DMCA takedown requests and U.S. subpoenas related to copyright infringement. Cloudflare was recently subpoenaed on behalf of Weekly Shonen Jump's Shueisha, while Crunchyroll and Funimation have filed over 45 million DMCA takedown requests with Google.
>The bill also defines what a foreign piracy website means in this context. The site must be operated by a foreign person, who in turn is defined as a person physically located outside the U.S. Nevertheless, it also refers to people whose physical location cannot be determined to be within the U.S., potentially broadening its scope. The website must be found to be primarily designed for infringing copyright, intentionally marketed to be used as an infringing website and have "no commercially significant purpose or use other than infringing copyright."
>The bill seems aimed at limiting the less tech-savvy from accessing 'piracy' sites, as it says that the blocking order cannot "require service providers to take actions that would prevent users from using virtual private networks (VPNs)." The order also cannot specify any technical measures for how the service provider should block access, which Lofgren says enables service providers the "best, least intrusive method(s) to comply with court orders, preserving internet stability and security."
>The bill also attempts to assuage service providers by providing certain immunities. A service provider (assuming the order is followed correctly) is exempt from any injury alleged by the foreign site and its users -- irrespective of the damages caused, or if the court finds that the order was improperly served. Additionally, the petitioner cannot later allege copyright infringement against the service provider, as if to argue that being served the court order is proof that they were previously facilitating a crime
>Service providers can also temporarily suspend blocking orders to maintain network integrity or investigate whether access has been denied to a platform other than the one named in the order. The bill also allows a blocking order to be updated if platforms attempt to rebrand to escape legal action. A notable example of rebranding was Aniwatch's switch to HiAnime last year. Lofgren's summary of the bill suggests certain orders may even allow petitioners to instruct the ISPs to update the blocking order directly.
>The bill also has transparency implications. It says that a court must make the order publicly available, highlighting the name of the petitioner, the foreign site, the date the order was issued, the duration of the order and its expiration date, and a summary of the findings that motivated the order. However, if the court determines that disclosure of certain information would "render the order ineffective, pose a significant risk to national security, personal safety, or an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the court may order that such information be redacted from the publicly available documents" -- caveats that are widely open to interpretation. Amendments to the order, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, will also be included on a public website.
>Per Deadline, the bill's supporters include SAG-AFTRA, the Authors Guild, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the MPA; the latter comprises Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Prime Video, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. Discovery. MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement, "The MPA thanks Rep. Lofgren for introducing FADPA and for her commitment to work with Chairman Issa to enact legislation this Congress to ensure America’s creators have effective enforcement tools to combat offshore piracy targeting the U.S. market."