Why SOPA & PIPA wont work

The solution is set of technical specifications adopted by the IETF that uses the acronym DNSSEC, which stands for Domain Name System Security Extension. This allows a user to confirm the authenticity of a domain name. Pursuant to DNSSEC, every website will have a certificate of authenticity that will verify that the site is, in fact, the site it purports to be. So, once DNSSEC is deployed, a “security resolver” function in the browser would be able to check the authenticity of the registration of the “wellsfargo.com” website that your browser is accessing and give the user either a confirmation that the website is the real wellsfargo.com or a warning that its authenticity could not be verified.

Interfering with the Internet

SOPA and PIPA do not attack pirates directly—mostly because they are offshore and outside U.S. jurisdiction—SOPA and PIPA look at law-abiding Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast and use them as the enforcement mechanism. Both SOPA and PIPA would allow the Attorney General to secure court orders that would require ISPs to prevent Internet traffic from going to pirating websites once the pirating website is known

Keep in mind that a new website can be created in a day. Our legal system would have to catch a pirated website and alert Comcast and they would have to block the domain name in less than a day. The US legal system has never moved that fast.

These bills would essentially allow the Attorney General to order ISPs to do something similar to what DNSSEC is trying to prevent: and that is to block an attempt to reach a website.

In effect an ISP, like Comcast, would intercept all website traffic and make sure it is directed to the correct address.

Government interception and checking each click will be troublesome.

1. The blocking function is likely to slow down domain-name resolution for the entire Internet. If American law establishes the principle of permitting DNS filtering, other countries will as well, and the concept of a universal addressing system will be degraded.
2. By disrupting the DNS resolution system, it will be slower. We can really have no idea of the extent of the consequences of mandating that each click to a domain address must be checked to determine if it should be blocked. This would only add complexity to the Internet addressing function and make it more likely malicious efforts to “block and redirect” traffic would succeed.

Will SOPA/PIPA accomplish its goal?

No. Even if the Attorney General obtained a blocking order that stopped Comcast from sending data to a pirate website, it is relatively easy to work around the block—remember, the World Wide Web was designed to be flexible. We can reasonably predict that a many “redirector” domains would soon spring up, many of them linked to ISPs outside the United States and outside the Attorney General’s jurisdiction. Downloadable programs would be available to use those redirectors. Indeed, one such program, known as “DeSOPA,” has already been developed and can be downloaded as a Mozilla Firefox extension.

Some experts refer to this filtering as a “whack-a-mole” approach.[1] The requirements are sufficiently easy to evade so additional legislation will later need to be passed to try to make writing, downloading, and using programs to avoid a SOPA/PIPA mandate illegal. That is another effort doomed to failure.

These bills put Congress in the business of managing the Internet in ways that will have unanticipated consequences. A working domain-name system is like a working mailing address—the rest of the system depends on it. If the addressing system is compromised, software will not work, queries will not be answered, and emails will not be received. Once you go down the road of allowing (or ordering) the functionality of domain-name filtering (even for a “good” purpose), you create the potential for restricting domain-name access for a host of other purposes.

Dr. Leonard Napolitano of Sandia Labs put it in his letter to Congress, the bills:

1. Are unlikely to be effective.
2. Would negatively impact U.S. and global cybersecurity and Internet functionality.
3. Would delay the full adoption of DNSSEC and its security improvements over DNS.

SOPA/PIPA Good Intentions but Dangerous Flaws

SOPA and PIPA would not work and the bills violate the fundamental principle of universality that makes the Internet function as a global communications system.

Finally, consider if this functionality were deployed, the ease with which censorship could occur and taxation would increase.