Are browser add-ons the key to defeating SOPA?
Chris Richardson | December 20, 2011
As the world of SOPA continues to turn, the emergence of a simple Firefox browser add-on may render the potential punitive actions of these protection acts null and void; or, at least ineffective, if not outright useless.
Firefox, which already boasts an outspoken stance against SOPA, and has already shown they are willing to stand by add-on developers who create circumvention extensions designed to go around measures currently employed by Homeland Security, has welcomed a new add-on, one that is designed to circumvent whatever SOPA website blacklists that are created, provided the bills become law.
Working much like the MAFIAAFire Redirector extension, the DeSopa add-on was developed by Tamer Rizk, and designed with SOPA circumvention in mind. Naturally, the idea behind the add-on is to be in defiance of the oft-maligned protection act. This even includes the extension’s name, “DeSopa,” which is short for, “DNS Evasion to Stop Oppressive Policy in America.” On the extension’s page, there’s also a multiple paragraph manifesto of sorts, detailing the developer’s stance.
An example:
The sad things is, if you were to point these shortcomings out to the government officials who support SOPA/PIPA, there’s a strong possibility it would get ignored, or they would pass it anyway and worry about the details later.
As far as the inevitable backlash that DeSopa will probably get from concerned government officials, keep in mind, Mozilla has already outspokenly stood by the MAFIAAFire Redirector, so I would expect the same when it comes to DeSopa.
After writing a rather lengthy and somewhat firey post on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) yesterday, I realized this morning that I didn’t know Microsoft’s position on the matter. As I edit our Microsoft channel, I immediately sent off a query to the company concerning the Act.
To my surprise it took some time to hear back, and when I did get word the response was ‘no comment.’ Obviously intrigued, I dug into the issue. As it turns out, ‘no comment’ is Microsoft’s official position on SOPA. The company has made no noise at all on the issue, other than what I would wager is a rather conspicuous silence.
But Microsoft did support the pre-SOPA Protect IP Act, something that SOPA did draw on heavily for its roots. To quote the official page on the House website: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) builds on the Protect IP Act of 2008 and the Senate’s Protect IP Act introduced earlier this year.” So we have Microsoft supporting the intellectual ancestor of SOPA, but that’s certainly not enough to say that the company supports SOPA outright.
We can, however, show that it does. And somewhat disingenuously, if I may. You see, Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA. This is from a recent BSA bulletin:
The following list is every single member of the Business Software Alliance. Each of them is complicit in supporting SOPA unless they publicly distance themselves from the BSA on the issue. As the companies are, presumably, dues paying members of the BSA, they are financially supporting the enaction of SOPA.
Chris Richardson | December 20, 2011
As the world of SOPA continues to turn, the emergence of a simple Firefox browser add-on may render the potential punitive actions of these protection acts null and void; or, at least ineffective, if not outright useless.
Firefox, which already boasts an outspoken stance against SOPA, and has already shown they are willing to stand by add-on developers who create circumvention extensions designed to go around measures currently employed by Homeland Security, has welcomed a new add-on, one that is designed to circumvent whatever SOPA website blacklists that are created, provided the bills become law.
Working much like the MAFIAAFire Redirector extension, the DeSopa add-on was developed by Tamer Rizk, and designed with SOPA circumvention in mind. Naturally, the idea behind the add-on is to be in defiance of the oft-maligned protection act. This even includes the extension’s name, “DeSopa,” which is short for, “DNS Evasion to Stop Oppressive Policy in America.” On the extension’s page, there’s also a multiple paragraph manifesto of sorts, detailing the developer’s stance.
An example:
This program is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy. The program, implemented as a Firefox extension, simply contacts offshore domain name resolution services to obtain the IP address for any desired website, and accesses those websites directly via IP. Similar offshore resolution services will eventually maintain their own cache of websites, without blacklisting, in order to meet the demand created by SOPA.
If SOPA is implemented, thousands of similar and more innovative programs and services will sprout up to provide access to the websites that people frequent. SOPA is a mistake. It does not even technically help solve the underlying problem, as this software illustrates. What it will do is give undue leverage to predatory organizations, cripple innocent third party websites, severely dampen digital innovation and negatively impact the integrity and security of the Internet.If you’ll notice, the blocked quote also contains a description of how it works and if this is all it takes to sidestep/circumvent/defeat SOPA measures — “[DeSopa] simply contacts offshore domain name resolution services to obtain the IP address for any desired website, and accesses those websites directly via IP” — then these protection acts are worth less than the paper they’re written on.
The sad things is, if you were to point these shortcomings out to the government officials who support SOPA/PIPA, there’s a strong possibility it would get ignored, or they would pass it anyway and worry about the details later.
As far as the inevitable backlash that DeSopa will probably get from concerned government officials, keep in mind, Mozilla has already outspokenly stood by the MAFIAAFire Redirector, so I would expect the same when it comes to DeSopa.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After writing a rather lengthy and somewhat firey post on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) yesterday, I realized this morning that I didn’t know Microsoft’s position on the matter. As I edit our Microsoft channel, I immediately sent off a query to the company concerning the Act.
To my surprise it took some time to hear back, and when I did get word the response was ‘no comment.’ Obviously intrigued, I dug into the issue. As it turns out, ‘no comment’ is Microsoft’s official position on SOPA. The company has made no noise at all on the issue, other than what I would wager is a rather conspicuous silence.
But Microsoft did support the pre-SOPA Protect IP Act, something that SOPA did draw on heavily for its roots. To quote the official page on the House website: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) builds on the Protect IP Act of 2008 and the Senate’s Protect IP Act introduced earlier this year.” So we have Microsoft supporting the intellectual ancestor of SOPA, but that’s certainly not enough to say that the company supports SOPA outright.
We can, however, show that it does. And somewhat disingenuously, if I may. You see, Microsoft is a major player in the Business Software Alliance, along with Apple and 27 other companies. And the BSA supports SOPA. This is from a recent BSA bulletin:
The Business Software Alliance today commended House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) for introducing the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (H.R. 3261) to curb the growing rash of software piracy and other forms of intellectual property theft that are being perpetrated by illicit websites.Yeah, how about that. In short, Microsoft is using a front group to throw its support behind SOPA, while publicly saying and doing nothing, thus avoiding our rancor and displeasure. Well, no, that won’t do at all.
The following list is every single member of the Business Software Alliance. Each of them is complicit in supporting SOPA unless they publicly distance themselves from the BSA on the issue. As the companies are, presumably, dues paying members of the BSA, they are financially supporting the enaction of SOPA.
To learn more about SOPA, and why you should be afraid of it, head here.
- Adobe
- Apple
- Autodesk
- AVEVA
- AVG
- Bentley Systems
- CA
- Cadence Design Systems
- CNC Software – Mastercam
- Compuware
- Corel
- Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation
- Dell
- Intel
- Intuit
- Kaspersky
- McAfee
- Microsoft
- Minitab
- Progress Software
- PTC
- Quark
- Quest
- Rosetta Stone
- Siemens PLM Software, Inc.
- Sybase
- Symantec
- TechSmith
- The MathWorks
