HUDSON INSTITUTE
FILTERING AND SITE BLOCKING: NECESSARY
REFORMS FOR THE DIGITAL MARKETPLACE
1
POLICY MEMO
Filtering and Site Blocking:
Necessary Reforms for the
Digital Marketplace
BY STEVEN TEPP
Contributor, Forum for Intellectual Property, Hudson Institute
1
September 2021
Executive Summary
Business models and technology have changed dramatically
since the 1990s; nowhere more so than online. Those
changes, alongside some key judicial decisions, have distorted
the operation of the US copyright law provision specically
designed to address online copyright infringement. Today,
even a platform that knows that 80 percent of what it hosts
are unlicensed copyrighted works, it can be shielded from
accountability by the safe harbors in the Copyright Act.
Copyright owners are left to send millions of takedown requests
with little actual effect on piracy. This, along with other factors,
led the US Copyright Ofce to conclude that the cooperative
environment the law was meant to create has not and will
not be realized without amending the law. And while dozens
of other countries have successfully adopted measures to
address online infringement from beyond their borders, the
United States has not acted to implement similar procedures.
Restoring the balance needed to address online piracy
effectively and provide an incentive for platforms to cooperate
with copyright owners should include three key steps:
• Amending the law to reverse harmful judicial decisions,
most signicantly to restore the “red ag” test
• Requiring appropriate ltering out of infringements at the
time of upload
• Codifying the authority of federal courts to order the
blocking of foreign sites dedicated to infringing activities
The Copyright Ofce provided a roadmap for course-
correction regarding misguided judicial decisions. And
platforms already commonly use both ltering and site-
blocking tools to protect their business models and reputation.
The objections to using these same tools in the copyright
