Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has likened piracy website blocking to "cutting off your hand to deal with a papercut" in response to the Japanese government's request for feedback on introducing such laws.
An EFF blog post[1] argued that website blocking is a "terrible" solution to copyright infringement problems.
According to EFF, such blocks can be easily circumvented; risk capturing lawful expression; and violate "national and international principles of free expression".
"In response to infringement of copyrighted material, specifically citing a concern for manga, the government of Japan began work on a proposal that would make certain websites inaccessible in Japan," EFF said.
"Website blocking would lead to network errors and security problems.
"According to numerous studies, the best answer to the problem of online infringement is providing easy, lawful alternatives. Doing this also has the benefit of not penalising legitimate expression the way blocking does."
Pointing to the European Union's Article 13[2], which was recently rejected[3] by the European Parliament, EFF said it has seen similar proposals globally.
Article 13 would have required online platforms including Google, Facebook, and Twitter to monitor potential copyright infringements on their sites, with rights holders gaining greater power to enforce their copyright.
The law was narrowly defeated, with 318 against the proposal, 278 in favour, and 31 abstaining. It was subsequently pushed back for further debate, to be revisited in September following potential rewrites.
In Australia, meanwhile, website blocking was legislated under the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act, which passed both houses [4]of Parliament[5] back in mid-2015.
The law allows rights holders to obtain a court order to block websites hosted overseas that are deemed to exist for the