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[inteuniso]

What if we could put the internet on the internet?

[MagmaMcFry]

What if we could put the internet on the internet?

It would get censored faster than you can type "SOPA". Twice, for good measure.

[Levi]

@Levi
SOPA's specifically made to prevent stuff like that. It's literal censorship; the government would be able to decide which websites you're allowed to visit, regardless of where they're hosted.

Then we could all use something like Tor to get around it, maybe.  It would be entertaining if due to something like SOPA people started to get good at using privacy software and encryption.  It would be the opposite effect of what the government seems to want. 

[MagmaMcFry]

Proxies would be outlawed. But there are other ways to get around this censorship.

[Karlito]

Without a serious, coordinated, government-run deep packet inspection effort a la China, it will be trivial for nerds to get around censored domains, but the bills would require "search engines" (a term defined so vaguely that this forum might qualify as one) to actively monitor and censor out people linking to infringing sites.

[Bohandas]

If this passes, then I'm moving to another country.

(though from what I understand Obama intends to veto it if it gets through congress, so likely it won't get passed)

@Levi
SOPA's specifically made to prevent stuff like that. It's literal censorship; the government would be able to decide which websites you're allowed to visit, regardless of where they're hosted.

Then we could all use something like Tor to get around it, maybe.  It would be entertaining if due to something like SOPA people started to get good at using privacy software and encryption.  It would be the opposite effect of what the government seems to want.

That would be awesome.

(BTW, it would be nice if those of you who know how to do things like this could post directions for us here)

[Max White]

Welp, I'm on strike.
Same for every forum I regular, you guys can join in if you want. Just a little personal effort.

[optimumtact]

Can't all the webhosting services move to a country without SOPA or something?  Wouldn't that prevent most of the damage?

The main problem with the bill is that many of the root servers for the internet are owned by us based companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server
furthermore the most common top level domain .com is owned and operated by verisign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com
This means the United states has an unreasonable level of control over the DNS system.

The problem with shifting these systems to another country is that they are systems that require large amounts of infrastructure to run and a decent amount of money to maintain. You'd have to find a decent number of large tech companies who weren't founded/run from USA which may be impossible or take a long time. Manage a root level server is a big ask and not one easily taken over. The biggest thing we can do to prevent this is decentralize the dns system to the point where we don't need root servers but that would require a decent system to be though up and implemented into every single OS and embedded device that needs DNS in a short space of time.

[Leafsnail]

Welp, I'm on strike.
Same for every forum I regular, you guys can join in if you want. Just a little personal effort.

Perfect!  The American government will quickly be brought to its knees if I stop posting here.

[Max White]

You totally missed the sig and personal text and avatar part...

[Cheeetar]

You totally missed the sig and personal text and avatar part...

While I'm sure you find your efforts very impressive, I think it's reasonable for other people to not.

[ed boy]

@Levi
SOPA's specifically made to prevent stuff like that. It's literal censorship; the government would be able to decide which websites you're allowed to visit, regardless of where they're hosted.

As I understand it, the bill would prevent the root name servers in america from resolving banned adresses into IPs. You would be able to visit a site by acquiring the IP adress and using that directly, or by using a root name server located outside the US.

[Max White]

While I'm sure you find your efforts very impressive, I think it's reasonable for other people to not.

Eh, saw a few other people on another forum doing it, then somebody somewhere else, figure if it might go viral I should help out.

[Eagleon]

That would be awesome.

(BTW, it would be nice if those of you who know how to do things like this could post directions for us here)

http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/how_to_reach_seized_or_blocked_websites.cfm
I don't know if this still works (or will continue to work), since I haven't bothered as yet since blocked sites are few and far between at the moment. But it shows that there are efforts out there. IMO SOPA (or whatever later incarnation finally worms its way into effect after we all get sick of fighting it every year) will bite its own foot off, in that respect. Someone will make a tool that makes connecting to an alternate DNS server an easy patch, and it will all reform on some other continent, maybe (as a last-ditch act of irony) minus the domains for SOPA-related official websites. One can hope.

[lemon10]

Huh, this is a pretty neat site:http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Protect_IP_Act_Senate_whip_count
For what its worth, it seems that 34 senators are supporting it right now (33 are cosponsors), 33 against, and 33 uncommitted.
Compared to 40 yes, 5 no, 55 uncommitted before the blackout started.