Imminent death of the 'net predicted!

[Foxpup]

I just saw over a dozen nameservers go down right before my eyes, what the Hell is going on? If COICA is involved there'll be Hell to pay (I'm in Australia).

*relax, meditate*

Okay, I've sent an email to my ISP, who I'm sure will discover a rational explanation for this. *dons tinfoil hat, just in case*

Anyone else having DNS troubles? I've got plenty of spare tinfoil hats to go around...

UPDATE: No reason to panic, just a bunch of DNS companies arbitrarily deciding to suddenly stop resolving certain domain names without telling anybody what's going on. Wait a minute, that is a reason to panic. Resume panicking!

[Weisseman]

Welcome to your walled garden -_-

[Avan]

Who is COICA?

[Nicholai]

Who is COICA?

http://www.eff.org/coica

http://boingboing.net/2010/09/20/bill-gives-doj-power.html

Scary stuff.

[Avan]

COICA MUST DIE.

Then again, what sort of chance does this lunatic bill have of passing?
... On the other hand, given it got this far, I have already lost faith in those who should have stopped it already

[Avan]

Oh, if COICA passes guys, lets all "opt-out" of the local DNS and use foreign DNS's in protest, which bypasses the censors. (It's actually really easy and quick to do. The only drawback is a marginally longer ping time for us)

[Mooshi]

Proxies, TOR, SWEDEN based Pirate Bay. The US government only makes me laugh. Bring it! >:3

I predict the exact opposite happens. Piracy will sky rocket out of spite alone and legitmate services will come to a stand still as people don't like their freedom messed with.

[Avan]

*if anyone wondering, using a foreign DNS is perfectly legal. Which makes it all the more hilarious how pathetic this is*

[furtopia02]

*if anyone wondering, using a foreign DNS is perfectly legal. Which makes it all the more hilarious how pathetic this is*

Yuppers.  I use foreign DNS often as a privacy measure and to view websites that otherwise don't welcome Americans.

[Kobuk]

Leaving a "pre-emptive" warning to please ask members not to discuss anything illegal in this thread as it may or may not relate to COICA, browsing the Internet, etc. Furtopian rule as follows:

3. Topics that are never allowed are sex with or between minors (human or anthro), hatred/slander against individuals or a group of people, and illegal activities or the encouragement thereof.

[Foxpup]

Using a foreign DNS won't work because the sites concerned use US-based nameservers. That's why I'm affected by this even though I use an Australian DNS. Tor is also useless. The only solution is to write down the IP addresses of your favourite sites until the insanity is over.

Oh, and I'm talking about or doing anything illegal. The trouble with all these schemes to block illegal content is that legal content gets blocked too (and not always by accident...), which makes people like me very angry.

[redyoshi49q]

So the law basically blacklists websites from DNS, but doesn't prevent access via raw IP address?

What's to stop members of the general public from making/distributing a DNS-in-a-box program (or a heavily populated /etc/hosts file, or something else similar) with these "blacklisted" IPs?  This would basically take the role of DNS servers into private hands when blacklisted domains come in to play, and thus bypass the blacklists.  It seems that anybody who knows what they're doing will only be trivially affected by this law.  That somewhat defeats the point.

Moreover, I *really* don't like this:

There are already laws and procedures in place for taking down sites that violate the law. This act would allow the Attorney General to censor sites even when no court has found they have infringed copyright or any other law.

(emphasis mine)

This seems to be against the very philosophies that the Judicial system defines itself by.  Assuming that this process actually worked the way it was supposed to, it would be removing the liberties of speech of both the content distributors (the blacklisted servers) and the potential content viewers (the general public).  What happened to due process?  What happened to free speech?

[Avan]

This seems to be against the very philosophies that the Judicial system defines itself by.

That's because it is. Ironically they are generally the ones who would be able to rule something as constitutional (were it to be brought up in court). >.>
Let's just hope that these non-elected officials have enough integrity to say no to COICA, should it somehow manage to make it that far. >.>

[Mooshi]

I have a different perspective. They want to turn the internet into an over-controlled communist state by only allowing sites they approve of to accessible. That is what I would call the illegal bit, Kobuk. We're just trying to defend ourselves, our freedom. While not exactly as bloody as the American Revolution, this is something the people will fight against. If someone from 4Chan can easyly obtain the private email address of someone from the government, the internet community can easyly find a workaround. Sooner or later this dying business model will phase out. The people responsible for the so called copyright protection laws that lead to this are stuck in the past.

[Avan]

Considering the fact that it violates the constitution, COICA itself, should it be put into effect, would be a violation of constitutional law, and thus illegal.

[Mooshi]

The constitution may as well be 200 year old vintage toilet paper. No one pays attention to it anymore! And if there is a conflict, the government would rather exempt themselves instead of enforcing the very foundation this country was founded on.

[Avan]

People pay attention when it furthers their goals

[Mooshi]

Like how people love hiding behind the first amendment amiright?

PS: C.A.N.D.Y 8D

[Foxpup]

So the law basically blacklists websites from DNS, but doesn't prevent access via raw IP address?

What's to stop members of the general public from making/distributing a DNS-in-a-box program (or a heavily populated /etc/hosts file, or something else similar) with these "blacklisted" IPs?

Nothing yet, but I'm sure they'll come up with some law against that.

What happened to due process?  What happened to free speech?

As I recall, both of those things died horribly during the paedophile craze - but that's another story.

Considering the fact that it violates the constitution, COICA itself, should it be put into effect, would be a violation of constitutional law, and thus illegal.

That's what they said about the CDA. It took over a year and a half for it to be repealed.