What is your opinion of SOPA?

The USA would have to rewire the entire nation, not just take control of tier 1 providers. Since the current system does not have sub sections that would be required under a SOPA network. You’d have to introduce an entire firewall system, replace all existing systems. Yet your country does not even have good internet technology, and is far behind places such as Japan and South Korea in networking. It’s just not going to happen, and anyway SOPA does not allow for blocking of IP addresses, only domain names.
 
The USA would have to rewire the entire nation, not just take control of tier 1 providers. Since the current system does not have sub sections that would be required under a SOPA network. You’d have to introduce an entire firewall system, replace all existing systems. Yet your country does not even have good internet technology, and is far behind places such as Japan and South Korea in networking. It’s just not going to happen, and anyway SOPA does not allow for blocking of IP addresses, only domain names.
SOPA is not a law. It is a proposed bill. It can be amended.

Besides, there is not such thing as a domain name, or hostname for that matter. Some applications - the good ones - never even use it. Internally, they issue gethostbyname system call and work solely on IP address.

And no, you're wrong. Tier 1 core routers would be enough. Firewalls aren't really necessary. Thats overkill. The traffic can either be redirected to a banner site or simply dropped altogether. The core routers already have the capability. Most managed routers and switches have some level of the functionality build in to them. If it helps, think of it as priority zero QoS traffic. It need never be delivered.
 
SOPA is not a law. It is a proposed bill. It can be amended.

Besides, there is not such thing as a domain name, or hostname for that matter. Some applications - the good ones - never even use it. Internally, they issue gethostbyname system call and work solely on IP address.

And no, you're wrong. Tier 1 core routers would be enough. Firewalls aren't really necessary. Thats overkill. The traffic can either be redirected to a banner site or simply dropped altogether. The core routers already have the capability. Most managed routers and switches have some level of the functionality build in to them. If it helps, think of it as priority zero QoS traffic. It need never be delivered.
You can configure the core routers, but in order to do so you’d need to force all tier 1 ISPs and router manufacturers to use SOPA. That, in itself, is a major civil liberties issue. Furthermore, there are also smaller systems attached to those core routers that would not be changed. So yes, you would need to rewire most of the grid.

Even if, and that’s a big if, you introduced such a police state system, there is nothing to stop your average Joe (with a bit of technical know-how) from creating his own internet away from ICANN. SOPA can block traffic on the WWW, but not if someone creates their own network and doesn’t use any of the tier 1 provider’s routers. It’s pretty easy to change your DNS servers and set up a new network.

Not to mention the amount of businesses who have already claimed they will host outside of the USA if this happens. You’d be losing a lot of infrastructure and business.
 
So are the proposed bills, except those loose definitions would then become law.
The argument is largely about that the Bill would have nothing to do with internet censorship, which has been rebutted.

I really don't see the point in arguing this with someone who thinks federal government blocking and removing websites from search engines is nothing to do with censorship.
 
You can configure the core routers, but in order to do so you’d need to force all tier 1 ISPs and router manufacturers to use SOPA.
All Tier 1 backbones in the US are already subject to US law - CHECK
Routers already have the capabilities to isolate, drop, or redirect packets based on IP or range of IPs - CHECK

Even if, and that’s a big if, you introduced such a police state system, there is nothing to stop your average Joe (with a bit of technical know-how) from creating his own internet away from ICANN. SOPA can block traffic on the WWW, but not if someone creates their own network and doesn’t use any of the tier 1 provider’s routers. It’s pretty easy to change your DNS servers and set up a new network.
Its damned near impossible. Follow me. Sure, you can create a closed network. Now you have to connect that network to another closed network to begin building your OtherNet. How do you do that? Are you going to run fibre between the two sites? If not, it means a lease line. Guess who provided the lease lines? The Tier 1 providers. What do they use? Their backbone.

The silliest part of the whole debate is people who say Congress should pass laws because they don't understand technology, who then make statements that show they don't understand it either.
 
Admittedly I haven't been following SOPA perhaps as much as I should be, but I thought the reason that sites like YouTube, Google and Facebook were opposing the bill is because it gives the Government the opportunity to censor the web, and because it can interfere with the content on these sites?

If I'm wrong, please correct me. This is just my understanding.
Please allow me to correct you then.

Read this article in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/technology/web-wide-protest-over-two-antipiracy-bills.html

Its a pretty fair treatment on the subject. It tracks pretty closely with what I have been saying for weeks:

The legislation has jolted technology leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack.

The major players supporting the legislation, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America, say those measures are not enough to protect intellectual property. They emphasize that their primary targets are foreign Web sites that sell counterfeit goods and let people stream and download music and video at no charge — sites that are now largely out of reach of United States law enforcement.

With talk of censorship and loss of Internet freedom, “the current debate has nothing to do with the substance of the bills,” David Hirschmann, who leads the Chamber of Commerce’s initiative on intellectual property...

“It shouldn’t apply to U.S. Web sites, but any company with a server overseas or a domain name overseas could be at risk,” said Andrew McLaughlin, vice president at Tumblr, a popular blogging service.
Decide for yourself.

Google is obviously opposed because YouTube puts them at risk, Google has to remove database listing and Google Ads looses revenue. Makes sense.

Wikipedia has no content control, so they are at risk. Of course it would stop the clown who is always changing the XenForo entry to say they stole code from VB.

Facebook has the same issue with unpoliced content.

It makes business sense for these companies to oppose it because it hurts them financially or adds burdens they haven't had before which will require capital expenditure to address.

But as the article points out, the debate about censorship has nothing to do with the actual language of the bill.

Read all the post here. Read the proposed law. You'll easily decide who has an argument based in facts instead of fear mongering and you'll no longer fear the digital boogie man.
 
Fred, I know plenty about technology thank you very much, and some of the stuff you said earlier was laughable. It sounds like you yourself know very little about the subject matter you speak on, instead relying on using ‘tech talk’ and ‘science blabber’ in the hopes that nobody will call you out. What was that you said? You were stripping the IP header and reprocessing the packet just to make sure it isn’t encapsulated? Yes, and just earlier I was using the center of my nervous system in order to facilitate the operation of my major motor functions (or shall we just call it walking?).

SOPA won’t stop copyright theft, it will simply force businesses to close and help pirates. There is absolutely nothing to stop a pirate from hosting content on a server, then switching to another one when that gets blocked.
 
Fred, I know plenty about technology thank you very much, and some of the stuff you said earlier was laughable. It sounds like you yourself know very little about the subject matter you speak on, instead relying on using ‘tech talk’ and ‘science blabber’ in the hopes that nobody will call you out. What was that you said? You were stripping the IP header and reprocessing the packet just to make sure it isn’t encapsulated? Yes, and just earlier I was using the center of my nervous system in order to facilitate the operation of my major motor functions (or shall we just call it walking?).

SOPA won’t stop copyright theft, it will simply force businesses to close and help pirates. There is absolutely nothing to stop a pirate from hosting content on a server, then switching to another one when that gets blocked.
Amen.
 
The major players supporting the legislation, including the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America, say those measures are not enough to protect intellectual property

...Decide for yourself...

Hollywood is paying millions,tens of millions for the stars. Movies are expensive.
Cut their salaries and movies will become cheaper, no need to download pirated movies,they would be cheap enough to buy in the shop.
 
You must not be that versed if you've never heard of a double encapsulated VLAN hopping. Its also sometimes referred to as 802.1Q nesting. It is an IP packet encapsulated within an IP packet. When the outer frames are striped during decapsulation, the result is another fully addressed IP packet. So, either continue to laugh and display your ignorance, or turn to the security section of your CCNA study guide and perhaps read? Hell, for that matter, go grab a copy of yersinia and try it for yourself.
 
If someone is violating US copyright laws, thats not censorship; its prosecution. There is no inherent right to break the law, therefore it does not enjoy freedom of expression.

Your messages clearly show that you believe US has a right to do what ever they want to do. But in reality , they have no power on other countries.
 
This bill will hurt the US more than it will protect the copyright holders.

With the risk of payment systems being blocked, DNS being blackholed, and domains being suspended, people will just seek to move their hosting, DNS, and business outside of the US.

The internet was designed as a decentralised resilient network, able to survive portions of it being wiped out, and able to route round holes, blocks, and control. If you attempt to control the internet, it will simply bypass you. It's as futile an exercise as trying to stop the tide from coming in.

A good analysis from The Register here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/18/a_preview_of_what_sopa_would_be_like/
 
You must not be that versed if you've never heard of a double encapsulated VLAN hopping. Its also sometimes referred to as 802.1Q nesting. It is an IP packet encapsulated within an IP packet. When the outer frames are striped during decapsulation, the result is another fully addressed IP packet. So, either continue to laugh and display your ignorance, or turn to the security section of your CCNA study guide and perhaps read? Hell, for that matter, go grab a copy of yersinia and try it for yourself.

VLAN traversal and 802.1Q nesting isn't on the CCNA (ICND1/2) syllabus. I can't speak for the CCNA security syllabus as I've never studied it.

I don't see why you feel the need to look at/use double packet stripping? If you configure your switches as per best practice (eg tag all VLANs across trunk links, or change your native VLAN to a seperate one that is not used for any other purpose, prevent access ports from negotiating to trunk ports), this would not be necessary? Most of the yersinia-coded attacks can be nullified anyway by the use of good configuration/design and adherance to recommended standards.
 
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This is quite a good debate from industry experts and they bring up some good points on the issue.
 
But as the article points out, the debate about censorship has nothing to do with the actual language of the bill.

Read all the post here. Read the proposed law. You'll easily decide who has an argument based in facts instead of fear mongering and you'll no longer fear the digital boogie man.

Did you ever hear of the term "net neutrality"?

Of course censorship is not the main subject matter, nor is it mentioned in the bill but what you fail to understand is that when the federal government can control what sites people visit (whether illegal activity is present or not) it is by definition, censorship to allow blocking of those sites and force tech companies to remove them from their search engines.

Web content is already censored i.e. my own ISP was issued to block access to the pirate bay website by court order, this is censorship but many would feel it's justified. Just because it's justified in that the activity is deemed to have broken the law, doesn't mean it's not censorship.

If you can, please give me the source for your definition of the word "censorship".

Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe believes that SOPA is likely unconstitutional, as it can remove constitutionally protected speech without a hearing, a form of "prior restraint". In a memo sent to members of Congress, he points out that SOPA proposes a system where a single instance of prohibited material could lead to the blocking of thousands of unrelated pieces of content.

Please read the above linked memo, which is from a Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.
 
I'd like to go to Alaska to hunt kodiaks. The weather is against you, the terrain is against you and its an animal that has been know to become the hunter when it realizes its being hunted.
You tell 'em Fred.

These pantywaists wouldn't know a real MAN if he stepped on them and scraped them off his boot. The way you use your superior intellect and persuasive skills to undermine their weak and baseless crybaby, hide-behind-mommy's-skirt whining never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Now about those Kodiaks - let's you and me go get a couple, eh? Just two MEN battling the elements and huge, bloodthirsty beasts, relying on nothing but our skill and wits. And a bunch of big rifles. A rackful of .308 Winchesters with high powered scopes and plenty of ammunition. A nice 200 grain subsonic round to keep the noise down. We don't want those bad boys to hear the round that blows them to hell, do we! I'm getting MAN-chills just thinking about it.

The odds are stacked against us! We know that. They always have been. Throughout history. But we also know that we will prevail. Because we are MEN. Don't expect these purse-swinging, mincing Mollys to understand. They can't.

I love you Fred. And you know how I mean that. In the foxhole way, not in the San Francisco way. God bless and keep you, my friend. Keep your powder dry.
 
If someone is violating US copyright laws, thats not censorship; its prosecution. There is no inherent right to break the law, therefore it does not enjoy freedom of expression.

You are correct - but the question involves more the techniques of enforcement. That is, do things go through the normal courses of courts (as opposed to a court order) , trade commissions, etc. - or does Big Government need to hire more people so they enforce commercial contracts?

As the analysis says, on the internet "foreign" and "domestic" tend to blur.

IMHO, these are issues which we predicted at the start of the commercial internet - that Big Government would see some of their power being lost to the internet and struggle in every possible way to stop it. Power does not like to be challenged.

The intentions may even be honest - but to assume that our representatives in Congress and other branches of government really understand this stuff would be a reach. In general, less regulation beats more regulation....when it comes to copyrights especially.

Taking a small example, my forums probably contain many thousand of copyrighted images inserted and linked to by posters. Big Government could order me to remove them all. How would I even find them (I have 70,000 images), let alone replace them or take them down.

Why not boil this down to a solution for the real offenders who corporations are probably going after? Those being the pirate sites for movies and music and software? This could probably be done under existing law or with a much less invasive law than this.

It's always interesting how "small government" folks often turnabout when any authoritarian/corporatist issue is on the table. Then they go back to bashing the attorney general the next day!

Netflix and itunes are proof positive than when paid solutions are available and reasonable, most of the public will not pirate. Problem solved.
 
Taking a small example, my forums probably contain many thousand of copyrighted images inserted and linked to by posters. Big Government could order me to remove them all. How would I even find them (I have 70,000 images), let alone replace them or take them down.

Why not boil this down to a solution for the real offenders who corporations are probably going after? Those being the pirate sites for movies and music and software? This could probably be done under existing law or with a much less invasive law than this.

It's always interesting how "small government" folks often turnabout when any authoritarian/corporatist issue is on the table. Then they go back to bashing the attorney general the next day!

Netflix and itunes are proof positive than when paid solutions are available and reasonable, most of the public will not pirate. Problem solved.
Contradictory statements.

And here's what you won't like hearing , but I' going to speak the truth anyway. If your site has 70,000 instances of copyright infringement and you not only know this, but haven't done anything about it, you really do deserve to be shut down.
 
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