DeSopa: a Firefox addon to easily bypass SOPA DNS blocking
addons.mozilla.org
addons.mozilla.org
I'm reminded of the past "victories" of the copyright lobby that ended up doing more harm (from their perspective) than good: shuttering Napster (which lead to the much better decentralized systems used for piracy today) and passing of the DMCA (which actually ended up giving legal coverage to businesses that profit from infringement).
We can route around DNS blocks to get to the sites, but what does that matter if the sites close themselves because their funding was cut off? A site like YouTube would not be profitable without access to US-based ad networks.
You can't cut of bitcoin transactions because there is by its very definition no place to cut them of.
If this is the case, we are only going to get that much closer to the end game.
It would be great if there was a tool to literally facilitate this transaction without directly giving from one company to another, thus bypassing SOPA. I give the "holder" $10, the "holder" gives me 10 BTC. Then I give 10 BTC to say PirateBay. Then the "holder" guarantees that piratebay can sell 10 BTC to them for $10. Thats it. They only converted BTC to/from cash. I directly gave BTC to pirate bay. SOPA is ignored.
HOWEVER THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE INTERNET IS AGAINST. This will prevent all sort of anti-fraud that is going on now. You will wind up bypassing years of innovation to create a black market. It will be detremental.
Right now, in meatspace, I have both options: I can pay with cash and have little to no recourse or record, or I can pay with check or credit card and have a record and various fraud protection measures. I want to have both options on the Internet as well.
Also note that various bitcoin escrow agencies have popped up, which serve the obvious function. Assuming an agency exists that both parties trust, you can have the fraud protection you want if and when you want it.
But bitcoin escrow agencies don't solve the SOPA problem -- once you have a small number of intermediaries paying these websites, they become the place where the law can apply its force. They will be ordered/coerced to stop funding ThePirateBay or whatever site the media industry targets, so these sites either can't have reliable BC payments or they are subject to being cut off by these laws without trial.
While many people (myself included) would love to see a cryptographic currency replace all existing currencies, it needs a transition period to have a good chance of succeeding, and making it illegal would eliminate that transition period.
What's the solution today?
If you cut any site off from Google/DoubleClick, you've effectively prevented them from monetizing through advertising enough to reach top 100.
That's not every site's business model, but there's certainly a class of sites we'd like to exist (of which YouTube is a prime example) that would not be able to exist without access to the US advertising networks.
"[T]his version targets software developers and distributors as well. It allows the Attorney General (doing Hollywood or trademark holders' bidding) to go after more or less anyone who provides or offers a product or service that could be used to get around DNS blacklisting orders."
Second paragraph: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/hollywood-new-war-on-s...
(Disclosure: I'm a developer on addons.mozilla.org; EDIT: Changed the post to add a source)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/desopa/
or
[add-ons mozilla base URL ] (slash) en-US (slash) firefox (slash) addon (slash) desopa (slash optional)
in case it is filtered.
Disclaimer: I developed it
Some might argue that speech telling you how to commit a crime is not protected speech, but the Anarchist Cookbook is legal to possess as well.
Dammit Jim, I'm a hacker, not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
Or something to that effect.
They'll have fun moderating every scrap of user generated content they want to make use of or shut all their forums down, and still, circumvention tools will be everywhere.
If this passes, not only will they find people will create tons of tools to make circumvention easier than ever, but darknet efforts redoubled and work to make the net in general more censorship resistant explode; and people doing their worst to ensure it'll be harder than ever to stop piracy.
And with that other bill, where the US can arrest anyone, anywhere, anytime, it's not good enough to not be American.
You have to remember, for a lot of people their online experience ends at facebook, youtube and hotmail. Sites like reddit, stack overflow, digg, all have audiences that generally don't use IE and will also be able to find a way around a SOPA block. Sure, these sites will lose a lot of traffic, but SOPA will FAR from kill them.
Part of SOPA is a provision that any tools for circumventing the DNS hijacking are themselves banned. So this extension would have to be removed from the Mozilla repository. At best, it would be distributed underground, and hence would not help to preserve the freedom of the average user.
IM unfamiliar with the bill, but given SOPA's wording, could it be that the whole of addons.mozilla.org, or even mozilla.org end up banned?
> At best, it would be distributed underground
If it were to happen, I envision a world where Aunt Jackie will ask little nephew Steve to enable her the full internets because she can't watch some photos on Flickr anymore, just like she could not install the Flash ten years ago. Steve will simply be asked to provide a piece of software to bootstrap, which if banned from the internets, will be distributed on underground network channels then diffused on a local scale through sneakernet.
It looks awfully like the BBS and early Internet in the '90s, with those warez sources like IRC DDC bots, and a select few having access to such sources and able to distribute pirated games on high-price CD-Rs.
I run dnsmasq on my machines, for example, and its primary purpose is to alter DNS resolution - my nameserver is set to localhost, and my dnsmasq configuration sets which DNS servers to use for what top level domains etc., and routes *.local to a flat file on my home server, for example.
Dnsmasq itself isn't suited to avoid SOPA, but it's a good proof of concept for a small dns server that mediates the lookups based on rules, but defer to "regular DNS" for everything else. There are tons of simple DNS servers out there that can easily be modified to do detect likely SOPA blocked domains and use whatever mechanisms to resolve it through non-US servers (even if your upstream ISP gets forced to filter DNS).
Worst case? Distribute zone files of blocked domains as torrents automatically, or hide lookups in otherwise innocuous looking traffic.
If they IP block the sites, the same mechanism can be used to serve up lists of addresses of proxies instead of the real sites.
The system just needs to be faster than the SOPA proponents manage to send their extortion letters to ISPs.
The beauty is that if/when mechanisms like this start becoming commonplace, the cat is out of the bag - they'll never regain control.
Won't take very much to do it. Heck I can even write one (since all you need to do is replace the DNS server).
I thought a major part of SOPA will be censoring sites, not just removing them from DNS. So even if you can resolve them offshore, they are going to be censored versions of the sites you know and love.
Also, the issue between domestic and foreign sites is still a bit vague in regards to SOPA. Supporters claim it only addresses foreign sites but most opponents claim (I think) that domestic sites can also be affected.
All SOPA can do without infringing upon another country's sovereignty would be to remove the DNS entry on the U.S. servers that ties back to a foreign server, but they can't impact the foreign content itself without violating world law. The EU resolution strengthens that by saying that if the U.S. had hoped they'd be able to censor foreign content, the EU isn't going to just casually allow that to happen.
Then write another program to detect if the user uninstalls the first program.
I don't have much experience with FF addons, but I'd like to see exactly what's happening here.
The explanation on how the extension works was enlightening. Perhaps I missed it, but would you mind including the explanation on the download page?
DeSopa might help against local ISPs who engage in censoring certain domains on their nameservers, something the SOPA legislation might mandate, but it won't help if the domains are seized.
Better would be some kind of P2P DNS system proposed by Peter Sunde of Pirate Bay -- a decentralized replacement for ICANN and DNS.
Tamer, you also do a great job of explaining in passionately clear, objective terms, the SOPA agenda, the weaknesses of its assuptions and it's dire consequences.
However, I strongly take issue with your own assumptions about the value of today's internet services.
More » http://caspiandesign.com/2011/12/21/desopa-great-ff-extensio...
Wondering if moving to another non US controlled TLD would work.
e.g piratebay.org would also have piratebay.ly which everyone would go to if SOPA took down their .org site