Circumventing the website blocking
mechanism proposed by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is as easy
as adding a browser extension.
Via Andy Greenberg at Forbes:

While Congress has postponed the second half of its hearing on
SOPA until next year, a developer named Tamer Rizk has been busy
building an add-on for Firefox called DeSopa,
which aims to give any Firefox user access to sites that SOPA’s
copyright protection measures have blocked. “This program is a
proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy,” reads a
note including on DeSopa’s download page. “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.”

DeSopa takes advantage of an blatant weakness in how SOPA’s
controversial filtering mandate would function under the current
version of the bill. The new copyright infringement regime would
allow editing of the Domain Name System, the registry that converts
websites’ domains (like Google.com or Yahoo.com) into an Internet
Protocol address (like 74.125.157.99 or 98.137.149.56). When you
type “Google.com” into your browser, your computer communicates
with DNS servers that convert that name into an IP address. But
type the IP address directly into your browser, and it works just
as well.

Since SOPA would lead to editing American DNS servers’ IP lists
to insert errors for sites deemed illegal, DeSopa simply checks
with foreign DNS servers to find the correct IP address and
navigates directly to whatever blocked site the user enters. To
avoid incorrect IP addresses in those foreign servers, the program
even checks domains with three DNS servers and grabs whichever IP
address has at least two agreeing answers. 

As currently envisioned, SOPA looks like a stunning
anti-success: Not only would it undermine core elements on the
Internet’s architecture, it wouldn’t stop much piracy. Indeed, as
Greenberg points out, it would probably make the Internet
substantially less secure:

Just because SOPA’s DNS censorship can be defeated, however,
doesn’t mean the bill won’t damage the Internet. Engineers have
been warning Congress that monkeying with DNS will make it
impossible to implement DNSSEC, a new DNS protocol designed to
prevent DNS spoofing attacks that hijack users’ browsing and take
them to untrusted sites even when they enter the domain of a
trusted one.

For a infuriating sense of just how clueless and careless
Congress is when it comes to regulating both technology and speech,
it’s worth reading this open letter opposing SOPA and its sister
legislation, PIPA, from 83 Internet engineers and inventors.
Here’s a
sample:

The current bills — SOPA
explicitly and PIPA implicitly — also threaten engineers who build
Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and
automatically compliant with censorship actions by the U.S.
government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our
priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central
points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so
close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement
for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of
the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over
what their citizens can read and publish.

The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free
and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a
free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit
above the political concerns and objectives of any one government
or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this
infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is
seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free
expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the
network for censorship that advances its political and economic
agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.

The good news is that as opposition to the legislation, led by
folks like Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican Rep. Darrell
Issa, has swelled, it’s been put on the back burner in Congress,
with a vote
delayed until sometime next year. 

Read my previous take on how SOPA would break the Internet
without stopping piracy
here.