The futility of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been highlighted by a Firefox extension that circumvents the proposed web blocking legislation before it is even in place.
SOPA – which has been delayed until at least the New Year after a hearing into its future was postponed today – is a controversial act aimed at reducing piracy by blocking websites believed to breach copyright.
As web giants from Google to Twitter have lined up to criticise the legislation, a developer has released code that undermines SOPA’s technical measures.
According to the developer – listed as TamerRizk on the DeSopa add-on’s home page – the tool uses DNS evasion to circumvent the blocks.
“This program is a proof of concept that SOPA will not help prevent piracy,” the developer said in the release notes.
“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.”
“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.”
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