Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
Yes, it has the potential to affect the internet in Canada and elsewhere. The server itself will still be running somewhere in the world, but the US government can poison its DNS entry and force search engines to remove it from their results.
If you knew the IP address of the server you could still access it, but if you typed the URL into your browser or tried searching for it on Google (and those two methods are how 99.999999% of the world uses the web), you could not access the site.
[Edit]
Beaten by Rathji
|
This. It's the DNS changes that are really getting under people's skin and causing the panic. Basically when you buy a domain, say CalgaryPuck.com you need to tell the registrar where CalgaryPuck actually resides.
So anyone can type in CalgaryPuck.com and get their beloved Flames Forum. However DNS is easily manipulated, heck you can go into your router and make it so CalgaryPuck.com resolves to Oilers.NHL.com.
If ISP's were required to do DNS changes by law then "hey, troutman's avatar is a copyrighted photo, take it down" suddenly users in the US are unable to access CalgaryPuck.com as a result. Sure the admins could go purchase FlamesPuck.com and start the cat and mouse game again, but why should they? They arean't running a pirating site, and they certainly weren't profiting off a photo of johnny cash, but SOPA doesn't care.
Although this cat/mouse game of altered domain names sure explains why GoDaddy would support SOPA.
At it's core it's the same problem that DRM has caused, punishing the paying/honest users for the actions of criminals.
