Stop Online Piracy Act
Overview of the Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act works by blocking websites that enable or facilitate copyright infringement. With SOPA, rights-holders can demand that payment vendors and ad networks end relationships with infringing websites [2]. The U.S. Government may also seek a court order requiring ISPs and search engines to block consumer access </ref name = "huff">.
DNS Blocking
The SOPA bill would work by blocking DNS requests. A DNS request works by translating a URL into a numeric ip address, and the bill allow the government to redirect the URL to a different page, likely a page displaying a message from the government </ref name = "pub">. While the aim of DNS blocking is to block access to sites, there are ways to easily bypass DNS blocking. If the numeric ip address can be obtained, access to the site is still available, though it would be illegal. There also exist plug-ins for bypassing DNS blocking, such as the MAFIAAFire add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Using a proxy server or a VPN are also ways to bypass the DNS block [3].