2025 saw the return of a once-defeated idea that never fully left the political agenda: site-blocking laws. Marketed as anti-piracy or “creative industry protection,” these initiatives threaten the core of an open Internet.
Over a decade ago, SOPA and PIPA sought to give governments and rights holders power to quickly shut down entire websites based solely on copyright infringement claims. Public backlash — including the 2012 “Internet blackout” — stopped them. But in 2025, the idea resurfaced.
Three congressional initiatives echoed SOPA/PIPA logic under new names:
None advanced far, but their existence signals lingering appetite for dangerous censorship tools.
Why Site Blocking Is Fundamentally Flawed
Site blocking inherently creates censorship infrastructure at the Internet’s core. Court orders target intermediaries — ISPs, DNS resolvers, reverse proxy services — not content creators. They must block alleged infringers, not proven violators.
Technical methods remain blunt: IP or domain blocking — a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. Modern cloud infrastructure means blocking one “offending” site can shut down hundreds or thousands of unrelated sites.
Collateral Digital Damage
These “collateral losses” have occurred globally: Austria, Italy, France, South Korea, even the U.S. Legitimate news, business, and civic websites were disrupted simply for sharing infrastructure with blocked targets. No legal safeguards can fix this, as it’s inherent to the blocking model.
Illusion of Effectiveness
Blocking is easy to circumvent. Owners can re-upload content on new domains; users can enable VPNs or change DNS. The largest burden falls on ordinary users and legitimate businesses, not “pirates.”
“Limitations” That Don’t Work
Proposals often claim to target only foreign or large-scale sites. In practice, broad definitions endanger anonymity — vital for journalists, activists, and dissidents. New censorship powers invite abuse by both corporations and smaller actors seeking to remove competitors or inconvenient content.
For Ukraine, the issue of website blocking in 2025 is particularly urgent. Since 2022, the digital space in Ukraine has become not only a platform for business and educational development but also a key tool for security and information resilience. At the same time, global legislative initiatives aimed at forced website blocking show that even under the guise of protecting copyright or national security, such mechanisms pose serious risks to freedom of expression, user anonymity, and network stability.
Ukrainian regulators and policymakers could easily repeat the mistakes of SOPA/PIPA without fully understanding their technical and political consequences. As in the U.S., blocking a website does not affect only the “violators” but the entire network: a single IP address or cloud server may host dozens of legitimate sites. Attempts to “shut down one site” can automatically lead to digital collateral damage — blocking access to news portals, educational platforms, and civic initiatives.
This issue has several key dimensions for Ukraine. First, the risk of violating the right to information and freedom of speech: journalists, human rights defenders, and activists may become indirect victims of blocking. Second, economic losses: legitimate online businesses can be blocked without any fault of their own. Third, technological risks: centralized blocking creates potential points of failure and undermines the resilience of internet infrastructure.
The U.S. experience shows that website blocking is structurally flawed. It can be easily bypassed using VPNs, new domains, or proxies, while the main burden falls on society and law-abiding users. Ukrainian regulators need to recognize that forced blocking is not only ineffective but also undermines trust in the state, stifles innovation, and limits freedom in the information space.
Website blocking initiatives are not merely a copyright issue — they are political, technological, and legal questions. Ukraine can prevent repeating the negative experiences of others if it establishes transparent frameworks, oversight mechanisms, and user rights protections now, turning the internet into a space of security and development rather than a tool of covert censorship.
2025 Lesson
Site-blocking remains as dangerous as during SOPA/PIPA, now amplified by centralized cloud infrastructure. Fighting copyright cannot justify embedding censorship into the Internet. Civil society must continually resist: a bad idea does not become good under a new name.
Subscribe to our channels on social networks:
Contact us: business@avitar.legal
Violetta Loseva
,
