Flying the flag for Tinseltown's titans like Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Disney, the MPA is no stranger to the anti-piracy skirmish. They're the same lot who'll slap an 'R' on your flick if you're a bit too keen on the naughty words. Now, they're stoking the fires once again.

In his address, Rivkin highlighted the severe consequences of piracy in the US, stating that it's not just about lost revenue but also about the 'hundreds of thousands of jobs' that are at stake.

Piracy has increased, with 141 billion visits to video piracy sites in 2023, a hefty 12 per cent jump from 2019. The Yanks and the Indians are the main culprits, they say.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the cost of a streaming subscription, the sky-high price of cinema tickets, or multiple streaming companies putting adverts in their products.

Rivkin's proposed strategy to combat piracy is straightforward: 'Site-blocking is a targeted, legal tactic to disrupt the connection between digital pirates and their intended audience,' he asserts. He advocates for a court process that empowers creative industry leaders to request internet providers to block access to pirate sites.

If you're feeling déjà vu, it's because the MPA's been down this road before. They were all hands on deck for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2012, which would've put the kibosh on sites with pirated content. But that ship sank after a mutiny over free speech fears.

Rivkin reminisces, “Back then, we heard concerns about the potential use of site-blocking to stifle free speech,” but insists that the real-world scuttlebutt proved those naysayers wrong.

Electronic Frontier Foundation’s  Katharine Trendacosta is not having any of it. She told The Verge it's “fundamentally wrong for the MPA to claim to take the First Amendment seriously in one breath and threaten the expression of so many others in the next.”