**Opponents say SOPA-like proposal would block plenty of legitimate websites.**Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin yesterday said his group plans a major push to impose a site-blocking law in the US. The MPA will "work with members of Congress" to require Internet service providers to block piracy websites, he said during a "state of the industry" address at CinemaCon 2024 in Las Vegas, a convention for movie theater owners.
"This danger [of piracy] continues to evolve, and so must our strategy to defeat it," Rivkin said. "So today, here with you at CinemaCon, I'm announcing the next major phase of this effort: the MPA is going to work with members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States."
A site-blocking law would let copyright owners "request, in court, that Internet service providers block access to websites dedicated to sharing illegal, stolen content," he said. Rivkin claimed that in the US, piracy "steals hundreds of thousands of jobs from workers and tens of billions of dollars from our economy, including more than one billion in theatrical ticket sales."...
Lawful content would be blocked, group warns
Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge urged Congress to reject the MPA push, saying that a site-blocking law would threaten the open Internet. "With today's announcement, the MPA has made its intentions crystal clear: It wants to give itself and its members the power to force any Internet infrastructure provider, up to and including the broadband providers that service your home, to cut off access to websites on their say-so alone," said Meredith Rose, the group's senior policy counsel.
The MPA's latest push for a site-blocking law comes about two weeks before a Federal Communications Commission vote to restore net neutrality rules that prohibit ISPs from blocking and throttling websites. The proposed net neutrality rules apply only to lawful content, but opponents of site-blocking legislation fear a blocking law would undermine the goals of net neutrality by compelling ISPs to block both lawful and unlawful content.
Rose said the MPA's requested law would be similar to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that was shelved after major protests over a decade ago.
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