IF SOPA (Internet Censorship) PASSES IN THE USA, WHAT IS THE WORK-AROUND?? HERE’S AN IDEA..

Stop Online Piracy Act Vote Delayed
It’s not DEAD, it’s just delayed until Wednesday.

As you may know in the US there is a bill being discussed that could dramatically alter US internet user’s access to the free flow of information.

While the premise of the proposed bill is to halt wide spread theft of content i.e. music, movies, and such, the means that are proposed could cripple the internet by forcing DNS servers to deny resolution of certain IP addresses. This is what happens when lobbyists write bills and congress has no idea how things they wish to regulate work.

Let me explain:

In general when you type in a URL web address such as http://google.com your operating system will use a DNS server to find that URL’s IP address, for example in the case of Google.com that address is http://74.125.224.72/ (depending on your browser location)
Without DNS available your computer would not know where to direct your browser to access content from from the site you were trying to visit.

If the government restricts or shuts off DNS access in the US the internet will for all practical purpose be out of service for affected sites or if they chose the entire structure for US users. Of course if the US does this then other nations will follow.

Here are some possible work-arounds including using open DNS servers. One of those severs is Google Open DNS (LINK)On this page you will see instructions on how to modify your network settings to reach this service in the event of a lock-down on Directory Name System name resolution servers. Instructions are there for IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. The other possibility is compiling a list of IP addresses for sites you deem important and simply enter the IP address (example for Google http://74.125.224.72/)

I used Google Open DNS since they are STRONGLY against SOPA and they have the ability to move their DNS services off-shore and out of the reach of US regulatory reach if they so desire. The other is of course OpenDNS

If there are further questions, I’ll be checking back this weekend and will do my best to answer..

m00k

Surfing The Apocalypse

More info and thread at reddit

Google Public DNS FAQ