Site-Blocking Will Not Defend IP, No Matter the Bill's Name

The piece argues that site‑blocking laws like the “Deterring Extraterritorial Foreign Exploitation of Networks Damaging Intellectual Property” (DEFEND IP Act) are not a legitimate way to protect intellectual property but a mechanism for censorship, overblocking, and abuse. Instead of targeting specific infringing files or actors - already addressed by the DMCA - DEFEND IP lets any rightsholder obtain a court order requiring service providers to block access to an entire website merely after alleging infringement. The bill contains no meaningful penalties for bad‑faith requests, no efficient remedies for sites or users whose speech is removed, and forces affected parties into slow, expensive litigation to restore access.

Those structural problems simply scale up harms that already appear with current takedown regimes and automated content filters: bad‑faith removals that silence criticism or commentary, and overbroad filtering that prevents lawful content from reaching audiences. Making service providers de facto copyright cops will deplatform protected speech, damage businesses and information access, and bake censorship into core internet infrastructure. Repeated legislative attempts - including SOPA/PIPA and more recent bills targeting foreign sites and VPNs - reflect a failed approach; the correct response is to abandon site‑blocking proposals rather than embed a new censorship machine into the web.