
In case SOPA passes: IP addresses of popular websites  - RyanMcGreal
http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nf5p1/sopa_emergency_list/
======
fleitz
I think we should stop viewing this as a bad thing and start viewing it as a
huge opportunity. Phone your congress person or senator and encourage them to
vote for it.

As the torrent sites go down they'll come back up as tor hidden services. Once
we're on tor or something like it the game changes entirely. As we stop
trusting the root DNS, we'll start trusting something like a bitcoin hash
chain based DNS system, as we create an anonymized, decentralized internet
freedom of expression increases exponentially. No URDP, no SOPA, no
unencrypted protocols, security of the person in their effects will be
guaranteed by mathematics and not the good will of politicians.

With all the monitoring, etc thats already in place it's only a matter of
time. We have the opportunity to lay the foundations of a decentralized
internet over something as trivial as copyright rather than freedom of speech.
We'll stop having to rely on a government to respect our liberties and instead
instill them in the design of the system.

Decentralized information, decentralized currency, decentralized control over
the future of humanity.

While it's true that this system created by SOPA will inevitably be abused to
curtail civil rights, the important thing to remember is that most people care
far more about getting their music than getting their rights.

Lets give the people their music, and they'll get their rights as they go
along for the ride.

~~~
kiba
Why do people wish really bad things happen so that people will do the really
right thing?

We should be doing the really right thing in the first place, not wait for
really bad things to happen.

~~~
fleitz
Because mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

~~~
kingkilr
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their
[the people's] right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
provide new Guards for their future security.

~~~
EGreg
please speak modern english, son :)

~~~
JonnieCache
Sorry friend, but english has been modern since around the sixteenth or
seventeenth century, depending on how you look at it. The language of
shakespeare is literally the language of today. The changes since then have
been minor when compared to the history of the language.

~~~
EGreg
I know, I just was joking around :)

------
blhack
Okay, first, the chances of youtube.com, or wikipedia (why?) disappearing
tomorrow are approximately 0.

That said, a lot of these "solutions" that people are coming up with just end
up getting closer and closer to what the DNS already accomplishes.

The _worst_ case scenario here is just a fragmented DNS, and the US losing
control of the .com TLD. The "doomsday" scenario here is that DNS servers stop
trusting the root servers, and don't take updates from them.

This is a gigantic headache for network and system administrators. It is not
the end of the internet.

If you guys really really care that much, here:
[http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domai...](http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domain-name-services/grow-your-domain-name-business/analyze/tld-zone-
access/index.xhtml?loc=en_US)

Apply for access to the .com zone files, download them, and up your own DNS
servers. Don't accept any updates from anybody ever and you'll have a much,
much, much more complete, much more "you can query this as a daemon" version
of these silly lists.

~~~
burgerbrain
_"The worst case scenario here is just a fragmented DNS, and the US losing
control of the .com TLD."_

That is the best case scenario.

~~~
sp332
By fragmented DNS, do you just mean distributed? Because DNS is already
distributed and consistent. We don't have to trade one to get the other.

~~~
electromagnetic
No by fragmented DNS he means DNS servers in Europe would route you perfectly
fine to Megavideo.com but US servers wouldn't. So all you'd have to do is
change your DNS address to a European one and bingo.

It's one thing to pass PATRIOT or SOPA, but try passing legislation to create
a multi-billion dollar firewall to effectively block other DNS servers and
block offending IP addresses.

~~~
Zirro
Isn't this already the case for sites that have been "seized" by the ICE?

------
there
i'm as big a hater of SOPA as the next guy, but this fearmongering is getting
a bit silly. as if SOPA is going to pass and overnight all of those popular
commercially-run websites are going to vanish with no notice or court
hearings.

and from a technical standpoint, most of those websites listed use CDNs for
static assets, so unless you list the constantly-changing IPs of akamai and
other servers for all of the weird random-looking hostnames used by those
CDNs, many of those sites will not even load to a usable state. (and porn
sites? really?)

also, from the reddit thread:

 _As some posters suggested, you can use another DNS server. The two server
I'm reasonably certain about are OpenDNS and Google DNS. Both of them are US
based but I think Google will move it's server to Europe if SOPA passes._

using a resolver in the EU from the US would be frustratingly slow due to the
latency. you're better off showing users how to setup their own caching
servers to bypass their ISP (i've always run my own caching server just for
technical reasons).

and do you really think google cares about SOPA? they have done practically
nothing to stop it; no notice on their homepage, no public awareness, only one
legal representative sent to the preliminary hearing, etc. this is the same
company that partnered with china and supported their censorship just to make
some additional ad revenue.

~~~
dangrossman
There's no need to worry about porn sites. One of the amendments proposed
yesterday was to instruct the AG to not use any resources protecting the
copyrights of pornography producers. I suppose their legal rights aren't as
important as the industries that backed this bill.

~~~
boredguy8
I missed that, so thanks for highlighting that one. And that's pretty
interesting, because I'd imagine that pornography producers are amongst those
whose IP is most often stolen. But you're right: according to Forbes, "The
[Porn / Adult Entertainment] industry is tiny next to broadcast television
($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television
($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31
billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion)."
<http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html>

~~~
dangrossman
The porn industry has grown a lot since 2001. The rationale given for the
amendment was that without it, the AG would spend all its time working
pornography cases, as they'd be the majority of copyright infringement
occurring.

~~~
Zirro
How did they justify it, though? Did they explicitly say that "our industry is
more important"?

~~~
jgeralnik
They just asserted that the government should not be working towards helping
pornography producers because the material is distasteful.

------
larrik
The BoingBoing link is a worthless waste of time.

Use this one to go there directly:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nf5p1/sopa_emergency_l...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SOPA/comments/nf5p1/sopa_emergency_list/)

------
flyt
I would recommend against using these IP addresses for large sites. Most of
them (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc) use geographic load balancing to redirect
users to servers as logically close to them as possible. Using this list could
result in accessing much slower services via server clusters on the other side
of the world.

------
forsaken
Sounds like the eventual outcome of this is a dark/grey net DNS system. I
wouldn't be surprised if something like this already existed, but now it will
be much more useful and interesting to everyday people.

------
koenigdavidmj
It's not the popular websites that will get hit. The public will flip out if
their bread and Facebook, er, circuses, go away, and SOPA will not be in
effect for very long.

The trouble will come when websites get blocked that do _not_ have enough
public support to bring them back again.

As long as Facebook and Gmail are up, it's only nerds like us who will care.

------
pavelkaroukin
Please, adopt Namecoin. There are already open source DNS servers available I
believe. :) Using google document or hosts file do not scale at all, while
namecoin now have all hashing power of bitcoin thanks to merged mining.

------
nikcub
SOPA is definitely having the opposite effect because I just found a couple of
great sites that I didn't know about

------
EGreg
If SOPA passes, can lots of people call the financial companies, ad companies
and others doing business with the RIAA, MPAA, and so forth, and "allege" that
they are "facilitating" copyright and trademark infringement. According to the
SOPA law as it is now, they will have to be shut down.

At the very least it will tie up the system

Or it might actually show these guys what kind of monster they have brought
about ... kind of like Sarcozy's household being disconnected from the
internet

[http://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-
busted-f...](http://torrentfreak.com/french-presidents-residence-busted-for-
bittorrent-piracy-111215/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)

[http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-
post/2011/10/04/g...](http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-
post/2011/10/04/german-politician-violates-own-two-strikes-out-bill.html)

But it's OK when THEY do it, right?

However, if there are only foreign sites (registrar is abroad), then I doubt
any major sites are hosted there, besides

<http://bit.ly> <http://t.co> <http://youtu.be> <http://goo.gl>

Correct me if I'm wrong, but under the current SOPA, only FOREIGN SITES can
have their financials cut off, right? I thought the Operation In Our Sites is
able to already seize domain names registered locally. So it seems to me that
the SOPA simply adds provisions to censor sites registered abroad, in American
DNS only, because their registrar is beyond US jurisdiction.

For example Russians use vkontakte.ru to listen to any song. What would SOPA
do about this?

However, YouTube contains lots of uploaded songs and the US government could
have seized their domain for a long time already, but didn't.

So I think the threat is more to the purity and security of the worldwide DNS
system, as well as to the costs of the ISPs, than it is to social networking
sites. At least, I hope. Does SOPA override the DMCA for locally-registered
sites, or did Operation In Our Sites just give carte blanche to the government
to take out sites?

~~~
msquared
> However, YouTube contains lots of uploaded songs and the US government could
> have seized their domain for a long time already, but didn't.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this what the DMCA safe harbor
protection is for? They can't just pull their domain if they are responding in
a timely manner to reasonable DMCA takedown requests.

Or am I missing a point you're making? Entirely possible. It's 4:55. I'm burnt
out.

~~~
EGreg
I think the point is that they are looking to give greater remedies than DMCA.
You would now be able to complain about a website to those doing business with
it, and they are supposed to stop doing business with it. If it's foreign,
anyway.

------
yangez
On a surface level, most of the items on this list are pretty absurd. Sites
like Facebook, Amazon, and Youtube aren't immediately going down as soon as
SOPA passes, except the torrent sites. There's a good chance they won't be
affected at all by SOPA.

However, this list is interesting because it draws attention to the fact that
these huge sites COULD legally vanish without a trace. Although I doubt
anyone's going to seriously try to take down Facebook or Amazon using SOPA,
it's still scary to imagine.

------
bgarbiak
Facebook (and, probably, some others too) redirects you from IP address to the
domain anyway, so...

------
TallGuyShort
The list saddens me, to be quite honest. Yes, SOPA is morally wrong and
technically stupid, and I don't think the government can or should fight
piracy like this. But I think it devalues the cause if such a large portion of
the "emergency list" is porno and piracy web sites. Seriously? The real
reasons this is dangerous is because of civil rights and the damage that's
already been caused to legitimate businesses by government incompetence (e.g.
erroneously changing the DNS of small businesses to forward to an accusation
of child sex crimes because they happened to share infrastructure with the
real criminal).

The fact remains that piracy is dishonest, and only serves to legitimize the
claims of Big Media. Say what you want about DRM, copyright law and ridiculous
terms of service, but if you're really someone who believes in free government
and the important role of the Internet in preserving it, I hope you join with
me in rolling your eyes at people who torrent illegal media and worry about
the effect of SOPA on their porn viewing. There are plenty of ways to buy
inexpensive, DRM-free music, and plenty of ways to actually support the
artists who make the music.

------
leeoniya
wonder if it's time to code an FF extension that aggregates and stores IP
addresses of sites i visit and bypasses the resolver/DNS from this DB.

~~~
there
bypassing DNS is going to break the internet as much as SOPA is. content
distribution networks rely on DNS for load balancing. legitimate sites moving
to new servers rely on being able to push out records with low TTLs. by
statically caching things for long periods of time, you are going to cause
more problems with legitimate sites than you are going to fix to get to
"rogue" sites that get taken down by SOPA.

a better approach would probably be to just hit that non-DNS cache for sites
that don't resolve, or push out a list of known "killed" sites. if SOPA makes
sites given the "death penalty" resolve to an ICE-style page, then the
extension could just store the IP addresses of those government-run servers
and consult the cache for sites that resolve to them.

------
Permit
If people have serious concerns, would it not be possible to build a Google
Chrome/Firefox Plugin that acted as a sort of DNS service? It would be a lot
easier for the average user to install one of these in one click than it might
be for them to change their DNS settings.

Just a thought.

~~~
rmc
It is probably easier to just run your own DNS caching server on your machine.

No need for a browser extension.

------
dholowiski
Does anyone notice the irony... back when the internet was new, dns was just a
bunch of dns/ip mappings in a text file... then we went to a big distributed
system... now the US government is going to force us to go back to
distributing text files.

------
leeoniya
maybe google in their fight against SOPA can come to the rescue and release a
database publicly of all its crawled websites, which can be syndicated somehow
via p2p. i mean they gotta have this info.

~~~
noahc
This is a horrible idea. What more could a cracker want than a list of IP
addresses that are known web servers. Sure, the big guys are safe. But what
about the mom and pop shop that pays $20 a month to host their website on a
server that is running a 3 year old version of apache.

EDIT: Can someone show me specifically what I said that is objectively
technically incorrect?

You may disagree with security through obscurity, and I agree with you that
obscurity isn't a very strong defense mechanism, but that doesn't change the
technical merit of it.

~~~
nik_0_0
Sorry, what?

What is preventing any 'cracker' from a list of IP addresses of webservers?
You can _VERY_ easily find out the IP address of anything you please...

~~~
noahc
There is nothing preventing a cracker from getting a list of IP addresses.
There are a number of ways to get an IP address of a specific server: whois on
the domain, even pinging the domain on a *nix OS kicks back an IP address.
Doing a trace route same thing.

That's not what I'm talking about though. If google released a list of all
crawled websites and their IP addresses, if I was inclined I could then take
those IP's and scan them for known vulnerabilities. Essentially what you're
giving an attacker is a prequalified list of IP addresses to attack instead of
attacking a specific range.

~~~
Dobbs
whois or ping are not a good way to find the ip of a hostname. Use either a
dns library or dig.

~~~
noahc
Thanks. I've never had issues with using whois or ping. The point still
stands, there are plenty of ways of getting an ip address without needing
google's help.

------
nu23
I thought blocking IP addresses itself was a part of the proposed law. If that
happens, this wont help. Using proxies is a solution, but this will make
things much slower, especially for videos.

------
evo_9
HN's IP, just in case: 174.132.225.106

------
IvarTJ
I have often wished for a way to see a history of what IP addresses domains
are resolved to, from my system’s resolver or a DNS server. This, in contrast,
seems awfully primitive.

------
andrewcooke
i wrote a small python script that helps handle DNS updates like this. if
anyone is interested it's at <https://github.com/ghettonet/GhettoNet>

it allows for dated updates, distributing in web pages, etc, but it's only a
command line interface. i hoped someone might add a gui...

------
AdamFernandez
I'm sure we could come up with some sort of host file synchronization
application to circumvent the DNS changes. It would be awful compared to DNS,
but at least it would be more workable than remembering and saving IP
addresses.

~~~
mattadams
HOSTS.TXT anyone?

~~~
sukuriant
Just hosts, actually.

It's: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

not C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.txt

~~~
mattadams
Not even. You misunderstood what I was referring to: <http://goo.gl/6iXui>

~~~
sukuriant
Oh, I see. I'm sorry. Carry on :)

------
ryanwhitney
<2012> Hm, that Reddit thread and the corresponding Google Doc both link to
sites with illegal and pirated content on them.

Call your local representative and get them to shut down Reddit and Google
Docs via SOPA! </2012>

------
micheljansen
I really hope that the internet anthropologists of the future will someday
read this thread and have a hearty laugh on our behalf in the knowledge that
all our worries were for nothing.

------
randomtyler
I'm not sure why this is being up-voted so much. It won't work. SOPA works by
not routing specific IPs, not by failing to resolve domains (which is why it
fundamentally breaks the internet). Additionally, a single IP won't work for a
major site like YouTube or Facebook, which work off multiple data-centers and
CDNs (which also complicates how to "block" a site served by 50 IPs that may
also be distributing content for another major brand). This is bigger than a
hosts file.

~~~
sukuriant
SOPA works by failing to resolve domain names, it does nothing to stop a user
from entering a particular IP address.

Like everyone has been saying, it. does. nothing. good.

~~~
randomtyler
I don't think that's true. According to
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57328045-281/sopas-
latest-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57328045-281/sopas-latest-
threat-ip-blocking-privacy-busting-packet-inspection/)

Cary Sherman, the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, wrote
in a guest column for CNET that SOPA could be used to force Internet providers
to block by "Internet Protocol [IP] address" and deny "access to only the
illegal part of the site." The RIAA, along with the Motion Picture Association
of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, strongly supports the
legislation.

[...]

An aide to the House Judiciary committee -- chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith
(R-Tex.), SOPA's principal sponsor -- did not dispute that IP address blocking
and deep packet inspection could be required. It would be up to a judge to
determine the nature of the court order that would be needed to block the
site, the aide told CNET this afternoon.

They are definitely looking to block by IP, not just DNS.

------
showdog
Don't fix your hosts files, fix your broken political system!

------
maximusprime
Flagged. Up-voters should be ashamed perpetuating scaremongering propaganda.

The sky is not falling. Shame to see the "I need to be outraged by something,
regardless of whether it's true or not" spilling over here from Reddit.

~~~
abstractbill
The people who designed important pieces of its infrastructure (tcp/ip, dns,
http, and so on) seem to be very concerned about what SOPA would allow
politicians to do to the internet. Do you know something they don't?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-
war...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against-
sopa-and-pipa)

~~~
maximusprime
There's being against proposed legislation, and there's "OH no! soon DNS will
not work, we need to quickly collect IP addresses. Lets build an alternate DNS
system. Lets overthrow the government!".

Do you really think the DNS entry for wikipedia.org will be removed? In the
stupidly ridiculously rare event that it did, obviously they'd quickly remedy
it, or we'd all just proxy through other countries etc, or it'd get mirrored
onto other domains.

We had the same "The sky is falling" for the UKs "Digital Economy Bill". It's
a ridiculous law, and is now being revised/investigated. ISPs are against it,
and it'll never be enforced. People again wasted hours of their lives worrying
about it.

