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Coders Develop Ways To Defeat SOPA Censorship
Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that one developer who doesn't have much faith in Congress making the right decision on anti-piracy legislation has already built a workaround for the impending censorship measures being considered, and called it DeSOPA. Since SOPA would block specific domain names (e.g. www.thepiratebay.com) of allegedly infringing sites, T Rizk's Firefox add-on allows you to revert to the bare internet protocol (IP) address (e.g. 194.71.107.15) which takes you to the same place. 'It could be that a few members of Congress are just not tech savvy and don't understand that it is technically not going to work, at all,' says T Rizk. 'So here's some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down.' Another group called 'MAFIAAFire' decided to respond when Homeland Security's ICE unit started seizing domain names, by coding a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains. More than 200,000 people have already installed the add-on. ICE wasn't happy, and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site. Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet."
We'll make our own Internet! With blackjack, and hookers!
Aikon-
Do you realise what you've just done?
Now, I don't know if people of other countries are aware, but there are some things you just don't do because of what you might summon
You realise that just simply mentioning the file in which hosts can be defined means you have probably cursed this thread with the summoning of APK, the hosts file troll?
Cue a thread or two of people winding the poor dumb bastard up, as he continues to list his random achievements from 2002 whilst gloating about being a graduate from some non-university no one has ever heard of, with a random littering of grammatically dire pre-written copy and pasted statements including random use of bold text.
Look, you just can't go around using the name of said file in vain, there are consequences.
Guess who will win?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
... in fact, never mind the Internet and blackjack!
It's not futile: it's Congress spurring innovation! Yeah, on workarounds for the law, but innovation nonetheless.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
If meddling with DNS doesn't work, network operators will simply be forced to block at the IP level, e.g. by withdrawing the BGP routes to the censored sites. Good luck circumventing this kind of blocking (still possible with proxies, and maybe distributed anonymous p2p proxies, but a nuisance anyway).
Wait. Did you just state that there was a way to reliably block sites, sarcastically wish people luck, and then parenthetically note how to defeat your invented scenario?
In that case: They could isolate all servers with blocks of hardened, compressed layers of dried pasta. Good luck circumventing this kind of blocking (still possible with trained mice who can pull ethernet cables through their tunnels, and maybe wifi on frequencies not blocked by pasta, but a nuisance anyway).
Kind of fun. Now somebody else go!
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Ugh. You absolutely butchered that line.
"In fact, forget the internet"
But everyone knows that pirates STEAL movies because they don't want to pay for them. Renting a VPS would go against this.
Have you SEEN congress? I wouldn't put it past them ban ALL dns. Would solve the problem.
brickspeed.net for your old Volvo performance addiction
Fuck it, we'll do it live!
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Actually there is a new organization responsible for that, and your "ICUP" is nearly on target. It's still a small group, but the 2 girls involved have a homepage... oops sorry I can't locate it. But Google should be able to help you.
the Great British Firewall.
Wouldn't that be Hadrian's Firewall?