The House Judiciary Committee has ceased without a vote to try to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) out of committee today. At the heart of the delay is the controversial provision that would give the Attorney General the power to shut down websites for copyright infringement.
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith said the hearing would resume at the “earliest practical day that Congress is in session.” That could be weeks.
IT experts have warned that DNS tampering would create security risks for both website owners, ISPs, and the government itself. Yesterday, Representative Jason Chaffetz moved to postpone the session until more technical experts could be brought in to testify about the potential negatives associated with this aspect of the bill.
According to Wired:
“The legislation mandates that ISPs alter records in the net’s system for looking up website names, known as DNS, so that users couldn’t navigate to the site. Or, if ISPs choose not to introduce false information into DNS at the urging of the Justice Department, they instead would be required to employ some other method, such as deep packet inspection, to prevent American citizens from visiting infringing sites.”
Several security experts co-signed a paper that warned about putting false information into the DNS system. “These actions would threaten the Domain Name System’s ability to provide universal naming, a primary source of the internet’s value as a single, unified, global communications network,” they wrote.
The internet has been buzzing about this for weeks. This will be considered a minor victory for opponents of the bill but will likely only alter the wording of the legislation in the long run before it is sent to the House.
Wait, isn’t this the same government that says the states do not have the authority to enforce federal law? Yet, they want ISP’s to do help enforce federal law?
I like my Congressman, but I hate yours. Until that changes and
we have a wholesale replacement of people in Congress. You will continue to get
what you got.
Re-elect no one!!!!!!!
Tim, excellent point. God help us if the would-be Dictator-in-Chief gets another term. Barry Soetoro has no authority to remake our country into Venezuela North. Please folks, vote the bum gone next time while we still have a country.
The internet is too much of a threat to total government control. They don’t like it nay hate it that we can communicate with each other so freely. This is just the start. Believe it.
If you wish to cut free speech from the citizens then free speech will be cut from you also for your constituents do matter and they disagree with SOPA and you have known that for many months now!
I’m so frustrated and disgusted with the back room handling of this bill.
Ron Paul 2012