[vital_sol]

Ok, so let's say SOPA is implemented and my Internet provider is blocking some sites through their DNS server. Who would stop me from using another DNS server (located perhaps in Russia or China) that is not blocking those websites? This is pretty much the same way that people in China use when they want to see blocked content. It works both ways, I suppose.

[pasbesoin]

I'm not up-to-date on most recent amendments or rewriting, but as of some days ago, SOPA made such activity illegal. And if you use a VPN, they don't have to demonstrated what you were accessing. That you were using an encrypted pipe is enough.

As I understand it, the legislation is far more ham-fisted than simply "borking domestic DNS". More or less, it hands the government -- and private parties having sufficient clout -- the proverbial lead pipe with which to beat you.

Step 1: Block access. Step 2: Criminalize circumvention of those blocks.

Of course, enforcement may be selective. But consider who is doing the selection and under what criteria -- both present and future.

[Kell]

Huh ? No. People in China are not facing just DNS blocking. There's DPI going on there (not for everyone), and they're nating a lot of people. And, in US, what if using some other thing than your ISP DNS server gets forbidden ?

Anyway, most of the people in America and in the world do not have a single clue about changing dnsservers... Heck, most of the times they do not even imagine that a website domain relates to an IP address.

[xolox]

For those who are not familiar with DPI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

As an example, HTTP uses the "Host:" header which contains the domain name of the website in question. Deep packet inspection could work by recognizing HTTP communication, inspecting the "Host:" header and simply dropping traffic to censored websites.