The Save Our Political Assets act [telecom]

I'm against SOPA, but Horne seems to be confused about the bill, and it's leading him to his weird conspiracy theory. He later writes: 'I must also admit that I, as the "owner" of these sites for the purposes of SOPA, would be very tempted to just delete the "offending" content, because I don't have the money it takes to fight a court order.'

They don't need SOPA for this -- since he's in the US, existing laws (copyright, DMCA) can be used to demand he remove offending content.

SOPA is targeted at offshore sites, which are out of the reach of normal copyright enforcement. US law enforcement can only demand activity of US companies, so instead of demanding that the web site remove the content, they want all the US companies in the path to block access: block lookups in DNS, remove links from search engines, and stop allowing payments through e-commerce sites.

It's incredibly heavy-handed -- some have likened it to shutting down highways to keep bank robbers from getting away. And it's not going to work: the bad guys will just keep a bunch of domain names in reserve, and switch to an unblocked one. This is a technique that malware distributors have been using for years.

..........

Which only works if:

a) One country has total control of what is a worldwide resource; and

b) There is no alternative that people can use to bypass any DNS system that "bans" sites.

How long until the rest of the world says "Get stuffed" to the U.S.A. if they pass this legislation and an alternate DNS infrastructure is created that is not controlled by one legislature of one country on the planet?

Is blocking Port 53 packets also going to be part of the legislation to force US citizens to only be able to access US DNS sites?

-- Regards, David.

David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

I know that the DMCA is already in place and available to copyright holders who have legitimate claims. I was making the point that it would be impossible to fight SOPA court orders when the price of doing so could be having your website disappear from the Internet.

"Heavy handed" doesn't even come close - hell, "Swatting a fly with a flamberge" doesn't come close!

SOPA is like killing an ant with an atomic bomb. It is so over-the-top that it's in a new class of creepiness: unconstitutional on its face, beyond any hope of repair the moment it went into the hopper, and so ludicrously vicious that its impossible to believe. I just /can't/ accept that elected officials could be /that/ stupid.

Ergo, an alternative explanation is called for, if only to keep my head from exploding when I contemplate the gargantuan quantity of slimy ooze that would be required to give this creature-from-the- legislative-lagoon a home. As far as I can figure, SOPA is a demand that the Internet Technoratti pony up the price of admission to the major leagues; a little twist-of-the-arm reminder that it's an imperfect world and that Congressional campaigns don't come cheap.

It's the only thing that makes sense to me, but YMMV.

Philadelphia Inquirer editorial of Thursday, 1/19/2012:

"The virtual world shows its real-time clout: After the Wikipedia- driven Internet blackout Wednesday, it's a safe bet that every high school student with an overdue homework assignment is well clued in to the debate over regulating online piracy. To say the protest went viral would be like characterizing the bubonic plague as a common cold. It was all but unavoidable online - from the black placard placed across Google's home page to the estimated 7,000 other sites that sought in some way to raise awareness."

for full editorial please see: