A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced what they’re calling “a discussion draft” of a new anti-piracy bill, the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act of 2025, known as the Block BEARD Act. Inspired by laws in the UK and Australia, Block BEARD proposes to allow federal courts to order ISPs to block foreign piracy websites that violate U.S. copyright law. It would provide copyright owners who have had their property stolen a new form of relief by having the courts interrupt foreign online piracy operations, preventing them from making unauthorized content available to U.S. households.

The draft bill was introduced last week by Senators Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), Chris Coons (D-Delaware), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), and Adam Schiff (D-California).

The measure immediately drew encouragement from rightsholder groups including the Copyright Alliance, Authors Guild, and Society of Composers & Lyricists. Conversely, critics express censorship concerns.

According to WebProNews, Block BEARD “focuses exclusively on foreign entities proven to engage in widespread infringement.”

“Courts would issue blocking orders only after rigorous due process, including opportunities for site operators to contest allegations,” notes the article, emphasizing “safeguards to prevent abuse, such as limiting blocks to sites that primarily facilitate piracy and ensuring no impact on legitimate U.S.-based platforms.”

TorrentFreak explains the Block BEARD draft “broadly applies to service providers as defined in section 512(k)(1)(A) of the DMCA,” the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “This is a broad definition that applies to residential ISPs, but also to search engines, social media platforms, and DNS resolvers.”

Service providers with fewer than 50,000 subscribers are explicitly excluded, and the same applies to venues such as coffee shops, libraries, and universities that offer Internet access to visitors.

In a news release posted on his website, Tillis describes the Block BEARD Act as “a smart, targeted tool to stop these criminal operations at the source without infringing on legitimate speech or due process.”

Drafted as an amendment to U.S. Code, Title 17, the Copyright code, the bill is still in the early stages. It has yet to be formally introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee in which the four sponsors serve on the subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law. However, WebProNews has already flagged it as a tool that “could mark a new era in combating online theft.”

“After a decade of focusing efforts overseas, the push for website blocking has landed back on American shores,” TorrentFreak adds, pointing out that in January Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-California) “introduced a new pirate site blocking bill, titled the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act.”