The Motion Picture Association just used World IP Day to make its loudest public case yet for U.S. site-blocking legislation, with live sports piracy as the wedge.

In a recent article, MPA Global General Counsel Karyn Temple argues that more than 55 countries already have judicial site-blocking regimes, and the U.S. is overdue for one of its own.

Her angle this time is live sports, where the value of a stolen stream collapses the moment the final whistle blows.

This comes as Representative Zoe Lofgren and Senator Thom Tillis work on a bipartisan bill that merges the earlier FADPA and Block BEARD proposals into a single front. After 14 years of post-SOPA silence, blocking is suddenly back on the table.

Why Live Sports Is the MPA’s New Wedge

Live events are time-sensitive, which makes traditional takedown enforcement nearly useless. By the time a cease-and-desist lands, the game is over and the pirate stream has already paid for itself.

Karyn Temple stated that ‘All forms of online piracy are harmful. But live sports piracy is uniquely corrosive.’

The MPA and ACE pointed to last year’s court-ordered ISP blocks during NHL games in Canada as proof the model works. They also flagged the ‘takedown’ of the Streameast network, while admitting copycats and the original operation are still running.

Honestly, this is the smartest framing the MPA has tried in years. Sports leagues carry political weight that Hollywood studios alone never had.

What U.S. Cord-Cutters Should Expect

If a U.S. blocking bill passes, ISPs and large DNS resolvers like Google, Cisco, and Cloudflare will likely be ordered to block specific domains. So far, none of them have spoken publicly.

The MPA insists free speech concerns are settled, but that’s not the whole story. Recent IP-address blocking in Spain and Italy has knocked legitimate sites offline when pirates shared server infrastructure. The U.S. version’s safety depends entirely on details that haven’t been written yet.

I’ve watched this fight play out across Europe for years. Blocking rarely kills piracy, it just pushes users toward VPNs, mirror domains, and apps that route around DNS-level controls.

Hollywood keeps treating enforcement as the answer when affordability and access remain the actual problem.

Final Thoughts from Troy

Live sports is a clever battering ram, but the underlying issue hasn’t changed. Cable bundles are expensive, sports streaming apps are fragmented across half a dozen services, and fans are voting with their wallets by going elsewhere.

If U.S. site blocking becomes law, we expect a bump in VPN adoption and a steady cat-and-mouse cycle of new domains. Studios and leagues might get further by making legal options cheaper and easier than they will by leaning on politicians and ISPs.

For more details on this story, refer to the report from TorrentFreak and the original article from ACE.

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