DNS Blocking to be Removed from the SOPA Proposal

 
US Congressman and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (pictured) announced a change to the SOPA ( Stop Online Piracy Act, here) proposal:

"After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers"

The Internet Society said that while they agree with the need to "combat illegal online activities such as child pornography, infringement of intellectual property rights and cybercriminal activities", they find that "policies and regulations that require the interruption of the DNS infrastructure, whether by filtering results or through domain name seizure have serious deficiencies. These techniques do not solve the problem, interfere with cross-border data flows and services, and undermine the Internet as a single, unified, global communications network" (here).

Like always, I will quote Ofcom "All site blocking techniques can be circumvented". This refers to 4 techniques for site blocking: by IP address, DNS response, by URL response alteration or by using Shallow or Deep Packet Inspection (or hybrids of the above). 

See "Smith to Remove DNS Blocking from SOPA" - here.