Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Coders Develop Ways To Defeat SOPA Censorship

Posted by Soulskill on from the causing-the-law-to-break dept.

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."

4 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Good move by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So it's like MafiaaFire/FireIce for SOPA, just like a little custom HOSTS file in the form of a browser addon.

    Technically not brilliant but a good political move, to demonstrate the futility of this legislation.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  2. Re:Congress vs the world's 10-million geek army... by Scr4tchFury · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The lawyers.

  3. Re:IP-level blocks by cybergrue · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It has been said that the Internet routes around problems (censorship), however there are plenty of choke-points (transoceanic cables for example) where a reverse DNS look-up could be used to filter the IP addresses of the packets going through. And before you say encrypted VPN, the technology already exists and is being used to detect and block encrypted traffic (Pakistan and Turkey) on the network.

    Yes it is possible to get around these countermeasures, but it will not be easy and probably result in a significant decrease in transmission speeds (sending and receiving). And when these techniques become widely known, they will be blocked in turn.

    In short, this legislation will break the Internet. Laughing at the dumb politicians who don't understand technology is a dangerous thing to do because there are no simple workarounds that will keep the Internet working the way we know it if this passes.

  4. Re:Firefox Plugin by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can they make a DNS server illegal?

    By passing a law? That's how anything becomes illegal.