U.S. lawmakers have adopted a bill to clamp down on media outlets in the Middle East deemed to be fueling anti-American violence.

The bill would—for the first time in U.S. history— label the satellite providers which broadcast such stations as terrorists.

That means that satellite providers like NileSat or Arabsat would have to stop broadcasting Hezbollah's TV station, Al-Manar—or be banned in America as terrorist organizations.

The bill, HR 2278, singles out Hezbollah's Al-Manar, Hamas' Al-Aqsa and Al Qaeda's Al-Zawra and Al-Rafidayn as TV stations which broadcast "incitements to violence against the United States and Americans," and need to be held accountable.

Those stations are run by groups America considers terrorist. Al-Manar has been considered a terrorist organization independently of its owner since 2006; so has Al-Zawra.

The bill asks that the President submit to Congress "6 months after the date of the enactment and annually thereafter" a list of incendiary media outlets in the Middle East and their satellite providers.

Of particular concern to the lawmakers is the presence of such channels via satellite in America, which "may increase the risk of radicalization and recruitment of Americans into Foreign Terrorist Organizations," the bill [in its initial version] reads.

Responding to the passage of the bill, the owner of Al-Rai TV, which supports the resistance to U.S. troops in Iraq, told an interviewer on the channel on December 13, "We may change the conduct of our TV channel in order to avoid causing harm to the people at the satellite company." The clip was posted online with English subtitles by MEMRI TV, a media monitoring service run by a former Israeli army colonel.

"We will maintain our rhetoric of resistance but we may be inclined to be, let's say, less vehement," Al-Rai's owner, Mish'an Al Jabouri, said.

The bill was introduced by Republican Gus Bilirakis and passed in the House of Representatives by a decisive 395-3 vote on December 8. The Senate has yet to consider the bill.

The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill—a common practice for legislation deemed non-controversial, according to Govtrack.us.

But the bill is hardly considered uncontroversial by all. "The constitutionality of such a statute is uphill," Boston-based civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate told Fox News.

"It runs against the grain of the way in which our government has generally treated common carriers. The telephone company, for example, isn't responsible for anything said and done on the phone lines."

Of the three Congressmen who voted no, a spokesperson for Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) told Aramica that "the Congressman felt this bill constituted excessive interference in press activities overseas over which we have no legitimate jurisdiction."

Congressman Paul, who ran unsuccessfully for his party's nomination in the 2008 presidential elections, previously warned the U.S. against taking sides in Lebanon in 2008, and described the Israeli invasion of Gaza in January 2009 as "immoral." He also condemned the Violent Radicalization & Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 as a threat to civil liberties.

Lebanese American Congressman Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), who voted yes on the bill, did not return requests for comment.

Many of the stations, including Al-Manar, are freely available in the U.S. online and via some cell phones, including the iPhone.