Firefox Add-On Bypasses SOPA DNS Blocking

Torrent Freak ^ | 20 December 2011 | Ernesto

[ShadowAce]

The pending Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continues to inspire opponents to come up with creative solutions to circumvent it.

A new anti-SOPA add-on for Firefox, titled “DeSopa,” is such a counter measure.

When installed, users can click a single button to resolve a blocked domain via foreign DNS servers, bypassing all domestic DNS blockades and allowing the user to browse the site though the bare IP-address (if supported).

“I feel that the general public is not aware of the gravity of SOPA and Congress seems like they are about to cater to the special interests involved, to the detriment of Internet, for which I and many others live and breathe,” DeSopa developer T Rizk told TorrentFreak.

“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. So here’s some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down,” he adds.

Indeed, having several workarounds in place long before the bill is signed into law doesn’t promise much good for SOPA’s effectiveness.

If browsing a site through a single IP address is not supported, this other anti-SOPA plugin provides an alternative.

[Still Thinking]

Something like this HAS to be done, elsewise how does the feedback loop get completed to inform government that not every nook and cranny of our existence is subject to their approval?

Yes, piracy is bad. True piracy. But half the stuff that Big Entertainment includes in their ever-expanding and all-consuming definition isn’t actually piracy (”If the letters in your name can be rearranged to spell ‘Mickey’, you’re infringing. Don’t bother sending a check, we’ll be debiting your bank account directly.”), and even to the extent that “piracy” is a problem, not every problem requires a government “solution”. In fact most don’t.

[Still Thinking]

In fact, this whole response reminds me of that old saw about how outages aren’t a problem, cause the internet just “routes around it”. So analogously, overly intrusive government isn’t entirely problematic, cause freedom just “routes around it”! (In this case, quite literally)