“Politics ain’t beanbag,” but the weapon of choice in the latest story of political foul play isn’t a smear campaign or an October surprise — it’s copyright law.
Ahead of Florida’s 22nd Congressional District primary, local journalists reported that news stories critical of candidate Michael Carbonara magically disappeared from Google Search results. The magic? Bogus copyright takedown requests from shadowy U.K. companies with no apparent connection to the stories. Carbonara’s campaign has denied any involvement. No fancy lawyers or deep pockets required, just a simple DMCA takedown form submitted to Google that the Sun Sentinel found resulted in more than 100 news articles that mention Carbonara, or the District 22 race, being removed over a three-week period.
Recommended Stories
This isn’t a glitch; it’s a predictable feature of a broken system. Civil liberties advocates have warned for decades that the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown regime effectively hands bad actors a low-cost, automated censorship button. While copyright law was intended to protect original expression, the DMCA’s design makes it absurdly easy for powerful figures to weaponize infringement claims to silence accountability reporting.
Copyright has become an increasingly popular playbook for authoritarian control worldwide. In Russia, the nationalist Rodina party successfully weaponized copyright infringement claims to help annul the registration of Yabloko, the only anti-war opposition party contesting parliamentary elections, effectively barring it from the ballot.
When copyright claims bypass judicial review, they become the ultimate weapon for silencing political opponents. Yet, rather than taking these instances as cautionary tales and fixing these structural flaws, lawmakers in Washington are actively considering legislation that would expand the copyright censorship system, allowing more ways to abuse the system.
Under the guise of curbing foreign piracy, proposed site-blocking legislation — such as the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act and the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act — would grant federal courts expedited authority to block access to entire web domains without due process. While framed as targeted anti-piracy tools, site-blocking regimes create infrastructure-level blacklists that inevitably lead to collateral damage.
The collateral damage abroad has been clear. A recent study from the Open Observatory of Network Interference showed that, during LALIGA football match broadcasts, 5.8% of the popular internet was blocked by Spain’s system. Similarly, in Italy, a study by the University of Twente found that 510 benign, non-streaming websites were blocked by Italy’s “piracy shield.” These weren’t piracy hubs; they were Catholic convents, telehealth platforms, and small businesses.
In the United States, we are seeing once again how bogus DMCA notices can be weaponized to suppress local reporting. Combined with global evidence showing the role site-blocking plays in widespread censorship, it’s clear these kinds of laws give bad actors powerful weapons to shut down competitors and silence political enemies. Combating piracy is an important policy goal, but experience shows us that anti-piracy tools can backfire spectacularly.
FORCING THE BABYLON BEE TO SPOIL ITS JOKES IS JUST THE SETUP. CONTROL IS THE PUNCHLINE
The DMCA’s notice-and-takedown system was designed for an earlier internet era, meant to curb online piracy. Instead, it morphed into an unaccountable regime where critical reporting can be scrubbed from public view without judicial oversight or accountability for fraudulent claims. When supporters of a political candidate in Florida can censor local reporting during an active election — or an autocratic party in Moscow can use copyright to clear the ballot — the law is no longer protecting creators. It is undermining democracy.
If Congress wants to support a healthy press and an informed electorate, it must reject another opportunity to expand broad, automated takedown regimes such as FADPA and the Block BEARD Act. Copyright law was created to foster the free exchange of ideas, not to hand politicians an electronic eraser to silence critics. It’s time for Washington to stop building tools for censorship and start protecting the public’s right to know.
Brandon Butler is the executive director of Re:Create.
